


when stars collide

by gsdlover16s



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Galra Keith (Voltron), Lovers to Rivals to Friends to Lovers, M/M, gratuitous use of cosmic bs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsdlover16s/pseuds/gsdlover16s
Summary: Before the war, they were teammates and lovers, piloting lions side by side. After the war has raged for ten thousand deca-phoebs, after an argument, ice, and an Altean king have kept them apart, Lance and Keith must work with a team that is not their own and wade through lies, betrayal, and their own obliviousness to find their way back to each other once more.





	when stars collide

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LOVELY SUITE MATE AND HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO MY LOVELY ROOMMATE!!!! 
> 
> here it is, in all it's disastrous, ridiculously wordy glory. i used the english to hungarian google translate to come up with alien words and names, and here's a cheat sheet for often used alien words and time.
> 
> lance = lovag  
> violin = hegedu  
> second = tick  
> minute = dobash  
> hour = varga  
> day = quintant  
> week = movement  
> month = phoeb  
> year = deca-phoeb

Their first meeting was accompanied by festivities and fanfare, though the beings around them were decidedly not focused on the collision of two people that could only be compared to the birth of a star.

Instead, Galrans, Rygnirathians, and Nalquodians alike were all gathered in King Alfor’s palace to celebrate the life of Blaytz, the former Blue Paladin. Blaytz had been a Nalquodian, so while the celebration was hosted on Altea, the customs matched those of his people. Thus, black clothing was expressly prohibited, dancing was encouraged, and alcoholic beverages from countless galaxies were abundant.

Blaytz had been adored, the easiest going of the paladins. People were angry and devastated over his death, but they took care not to let it show. After all, one of the worst ways to disrespect a mourning Nalquodian family was to bring despair into a celebration of life, so the guests pasted smiles onto their faces and traded light-hearted tales of the fallen soldier. (But in the darker corners of the ballroom, there were whispers of “what ifs” and declarations of fault.  _ The tragedy could have been avoided, _ people murmured.  _ The Paladins couldn’t form Voltron because the Red Paladin was still too young to pilot his lion. Blaytz would still be alive if the Red Paladin had only been there. _ These murmurs were ignored by the few Galrans who heard such slander over the din of the celebration, their ears flicking with displeasure. Ruining the night further with bloodshed and arguments would not do.)

Nevertheless, despite the shadows that lurked in the minds of attenders and in the dark corners, the celebration continued at full-swing, bringing planets together and carefully avoiding the question of who would be the next Blue Paladin.

Lovag, Prince of Altea, galaxy-renowned sharpshooter, and self-declared ladies’ man, was plucking a glass of nunvill off the nearest server’s tray when his attention was abruptly pulled from the celebration. He had been wrangled into traditional Altean attire by the combined forces of his assistant’s muscles and his sister’s will. Thankfully, Allura was kind enough to let Lovag pick the color, so the deep, and — dare he say it — royal blue that clothed him made his eyes pop and matched his markings exquisitely. All in all, Lovag was quite proud of his outfit, which was probably why he was so angry when someone collided with him, spilling his newly acquired nunvill down his front and staining the fabric.

The perpetrator (eventually revealed to be Keith Kogane, Red Paladin of Daibazaal, galaxy-renowned swordsman, and Lovag-declared sourpuss) immediately caught his balance and took a step away from Lovag. His expression offered no trace of guilt outside of his slightly widened eyes, and Lovag, normally a chill, easy-going guy, instantly felt his blood boil.

“Jeez, watch it!” Lovag huffed, shaking his arms a bit. The drops of nunvill that flew from his sleeves only served to infuriate him further and Lovag felt his scowl deepen alongside his glare. The man before him was definitely some sort of Galran — the fluffy purple ears perched on his head were a giveaway — but his stature was too small and his skin too smooth to be full blooded. There was also the matter of the almost unnatural grace of his movement. It took Lovag only a few moments to notice the impeccable posture and lines along his shirt’s breast that served as the Galran equivalent for medals. Ah, a soldier then.

The soldier, clearly out of his depth in the face of Lovag’s presence, only took another step back and mumbled, “Uh, sorry.”

“Yeah, well ‘sorry’ isn’t going to get the stains out of this, now is it?” Lovag scoffed. He took only a second to stand on his toes and peer around the ballroom, and he tried not to feel too giddy over the few extra inches it gave him over the soldier. Finally, once it became obvious that all servants and Allura were busy seeing to the palace’s visitors, Lovag settled back on his feet and turned to the soldier. The man, who surely couldn’t be too far from Lovag’s own age, was still standing there, eyes no longer wide but overall demeanor surprisingly awkward. His ears flicked every time there was a burst of laughter from across the room and his hands clenched every few seconds, as if grasping for something that wasn’t there. He looked hilariously out of his depth.

Lovag, shark-like grin growing, saw the opportunity and  _ pounced. _

“Heeeeeeyyyy,” he drawled, expectant air firmly in place. “Since everyone around seems to be busy helping out your people and my clothes are kinda ruined, I’m desperately in need of someone to help me change. W _ hatever _ do you think I should do?”

Lovag expertly placed the back of his wrist to his forehead and fluttered his eyelashes.

The soldier raised an eyebrow.

“Uh. Change yourself?” he suggested.

Lovag dropped his hand and scoffed. “Yeah, not happening. Just follow me _. _ ” With one hand still holding his tragically empty nunvill glass, Lovag grabbed the soldier’s wrist and began to navigate the crowd in the direction of the nearest door.

“Wha—” the soldier said, clearly taken by surprise, before efficiently being interrupted by Lovag.

“Oh come  _ on _ . I’m bored and you’re clearly uncomfortable with playing nice at a shindig like this, so just look pretty and say thank you.” Lovag smirked knowingly back as his captive, who had finally stopped dragging his feet and was now easily following him.

“I wasn’t…um,” the soldier tried, but soon gave up all pretenses upon seeing Lovag’s smirk grow. “Alright, fine. A…gathering like this isn’t exactly my usual scene.”

“Yup,” Lovag said, popping the ‘p.’ “And that’s exactly why I got you out of there. Because dude” — he stopped and dropped the soldier’s hand, far enough away from the ballroom that the hallway was now quiet and empty — “you are definitely  _ not _ the only one weirded out by the concept of partying all night when a paladin dies.”

The soldier’s tense posture seemed to relax a bit, and Lovag found himself holding out his hand palm forward, grin still firmly in place. “The name’s Lovag, by the way,” he said with a forced air of casualness. He waited for the light of recognition to enter the soldier’s eyes and for his shoulders to tense once more, but it never came.

The soldier simply nodded, placed his own palm against Lovag’s, and said, “Keith.”

(Lovag didn’t notice the apprehension that hid behind Keith’s eyes. He didn’t make the connection between a young, highly decorated Galran half-blood and the Red Paladin that people were blaming for the death of Blaytz. He didn’t realize just who was standing in front of him. He didn’t, but eventually, he would.)

Another burst of laughter and cheers wound its way down the hallway from the ballroom, but neither noticed. Thumbs now wrapped around the other’s hand and gazes locked, the two simply stood there. They didn’t realize that this moment would impact the universe for thousands of years to come, but the moment the Altean prince formally met the Galran pilot, planets aligned and black holes collided and suns imploded into nothing. A bond was formed, stronger than time and purer than quintessence, and for a time it went unnoticed. But eventually, the two realized the force that pulled them closer and closer, binding their hearts and connecting their souls and despite what Newton said, the distance between them didn’t matter and it never would.

The rest, as they say, was history.

\---

Lovag was sitting at his desk reviewing recordings when he heard the door behind him open. He  _ felt _ Keith as he stalked over to Lovag and draped himself over his shoulders, careful to keep his claws from snagging on Lovag’s dress clothes. His weight was familiar and the tender kiss that Keith placed to the back of Lovag’s neck reassuring. Slowly, the worry that had been pinching at his brows and pulling at his shoulders abated, and Lovag reclined against the back of his chair, leaning further into Keith’s embrace.

“Hey,” he murmured softly, almost reverently.

“Hey,” Keith echoed. His ears flicked, brushing against the side of Lovag’s head. “You lookin’ at the recordings from the last mission?”

Lovag hummed an affirmative and dragged his hand down his face. “Trigel should never have been hurt. If I had just been faster o-or  _ done something _ —”

“Like what?” Keith questioned, tone sharp enough to cut. Lovag didn’t flinch; he was used to the razor edge of the Red Paladin’s words. “Like shot down more ships or summoned your ice ray sooner or taken on an entire battalion by yourself?”

Lovag shrugged and Keith moved to kneel at his side.

“You did everything you could, and it wasn’t your fault that Trigel got hurt. It wasn’t any of our faults, okay? Take if from our fearless leader’s right hand man.” A self-depreciating grin appeared on Keith’s face; they both knew Keith was more of a son to Zarkon than a general. “Don’t blame yourself when what you were doing out there was more than enough. The Blue Lion picked  _ you _ , Lovag. Out of everyone that came to beg entrance, she ignored them all and turned to you. That  _ means _ something, so don’t throw away the trust your lion placed in you every time a team member gets hurt. Leave the trust issues to Zarkon and Alfor. You know they have enough of ‘em to go around.”

Lovag snorted, turning to look at the footage that played over the top of his desk. Taken from the point of view of the Red Lion, it showed him and Blue weaving through the fleet of ships, lasers burning a path through the armada. Each shot taken hit home, and not a single laser missed its mark. The sight made Lovag smile, remembering how much easier it was to shoot when you essentially became one with your gun. Blue was definitely easier to work with than Altean blasters, and Lovag found himself drowning in gratefulness towards his lion for picking him as her paladin.

They had waited a week before searching for the next Blue Paladin, and since King Alfor created the lions, the search took place on Altea. Countless beings formed lines leading to the hangar at the center of the castle, and nearly every planet that had ever been visited by or had heard of Voltron had a representative in attendance. Lovag, barely past his coming-of-age ceremony and already weighed down by his princely duties, paid little heed to the search. He had only agreed to help oversee the process in the face of Allura’s glare, so the first morning of the search found him sitting half-asleep next to Allura and his father on a platform overlooking the hangar.

The Blue Lion, dimmed and silent, as it had been since Blaytz’s death, sat alone in the hangar as the first hopefuls were allowed through the hangar doors. The first candidate was Altean, an older, distant cousin of Lovag’s, and she marched up to the ship with too little fear and too much arrogance. The lion remained silent in the face of her expectant aura, and when she began to pound her foot and cause a scene, the guards swiftly escorted her away, allowing the next candidate to step forward.

The process had continued for hours, and every time Lovag had begun to inch towards the edge of his seat in hopes of fleeing to the firing range or the lake, Allura had simply glanced at him from the corner of her eye, pinning him in place like a muldok on a dissecting table. It was truly unfair how much pain and suffering she could promise with a single flick of her eyes.

Eventually, the kitchen staff had brought the three of them lunch, and Lovag devoured a malac and salata sandwich as he watched the five hundredth and sixty-fourth candidate pull on his fluffy Galran ears and bar his incredibly pointed teeth at the immovable Blue Lion. The whole throw-a-tantrum-and-get-forcibly-removed-from-the-hangar shtick should have been more interesting, but at that point, Lovag had seen it so many times in the past four varga that he had lost interest.

“Geez,” Lovag muttered to Allura around his sandwich. “Why do these guys keep feeling the need to make such a pala _ din _ ?”

On any other day, Lovag would have turned to Allura and smiled a shit-eating grin. On any other day, he would have watched as the light faded from her eyes and the heel of her palm met her forehead with a  _ smack _ . On any other day, such a godawful pun would surely have gotten him kicked off of the platform, free to go about his business and avoid the hordes of beings that still surrounded the palace.

This was not any other day.

On this day, the floor had rumbled, the air in the room had suddenly turned tense, and the Blue Lion had risen from its position, hovering to stare at the boy with salata still hanging from his mouth. This was the day that Lovag, Prince of Altea, galaxy-renowned sharpshooter, self-declared ladies’ man, and son of the man who had been denied by the Red Lion in favor of a Galran halfling  _ infant _ , said an atrocious pun and became the Blue Paladin as a result. It was also the day he almost died from choking on salata.

It had been nearly two deca-phoebs since Blue chose Lovag as her paladin, and this mission had been his sixteenth since graduating with Keith from the training school for up-and-coming paladins. The adult paladins had, of course, not been forced to go to school before earning to privilege of being a paladin, and Lovag and Keith had griped about such a fact countless times. All in all, their petty anger towards the adults delaying their role as paladins — Lovag by a phoeb or two, Keith by a deca-deca-phoeb or two — worked to bring them closer, so when the two had finally gone onto the field alongside the other paladins and formed Voltron, coming together had been as simple as breathing for them. Joining with the other paladins had been a bit tricky, but eventually it all turned out okay, and Voltron was the strongest it had ever been. Lovag was glad, and he was even more glad that he had Keith at his side through it all.

“Okay,” Lovag finally admitted, tearing his gaze from the video and his mind from its wanderings. “You  _ may _ have a point, but don’t let that go to your head! I know you and your ego, and somebody around here has gotta keep you in check, so it might as well be me.”

Keith just smiled, leaning forward to give Lovag a peck on the lips, then stood and stalked over to Lovag’s second favorite couch. (Everything that Keith did was cat-like, and had Lovag not known him so well, he would’ve been alarmed by his graceful way of moving and how well it seemed to match his lion’s.)

“Hey, royal pain,” Keith called, collapsing and burrowing into a mass of throw cushions that Lovag kept around for that exact purpose. “I’ve got a question.”

“What is it, fuzzy butt?”

Keith glared from his nest of pillows. Lovag turned sideways in his chair and grinned. Three minutes later, their staring contest ended with bloodshot eyes and Lovag celebrating his victory by falling on top of his boyfriend. The two of them, used to such turns of events, quickly shifted so they were facing each other, knees touching and heads resting on the back of the couch.

“Okay, so you had a question,” Lovag stated. Staring contests were a must in every strong relationship, but communication was important too, and far be it from him to ignore that.

A small smile grew on Keith’s face but then disappeared just as quickly. “Yeah, I just…it’s about Daibazaal a-and this whole mess between Zarkon and Alfor.”

Lovag’s stomach immediately sank to his knees, but he refused to let his apprehension show. “And…?”

“It’s just…” Keith sighed. “I think that King Alfor is wrong. He claims that Zarkon is up to something and that we shouldn’t bring out lions to his aid, but the king has never been a paladin. He doesn’t share the bond that the five of us do. That  _ we  _ do.”

Lovag looked down, where Keith’s clawed hand now rested on his, and swallowed. “You think Emperor Zarkon really is just doing this to help Honerva and seal the rift?”

“Lovag, we’ve both formed Voltron with Zarkon countless times. We’ve been in his head.” Keith tightened his hand around Lovag’s. “Instead of mistrusting him and refusing to give him any aid, I think that it’s time Voltron gets out from underneath Altea’s thumb. Alfor may have created the lions, but he’s not one of us. I mean, not really. If Zarkon, our  _ leader _ , asks for our help, we shouldn’t refuse him just because Alfor says to.”

“You realize,” Lovag said lowly, brow furrowed. “That Alfor is my father, right? He’s my  _ king _ . What you’re saying…it’s treason.”

“Not for me. I’m not Altean.”

“But I  _ am _ , and I can’t just run off blindly into the sunset. I’d be…abandoning my people! My family!”

“Lovag!” Keith burst. “Voltron  _ is  _ your family! How could you even think of turning your back on Zarkon like this? Of turning your back on  _ me _ ?”

“ _ What _ ? Oh, so if I don’t agree to betray my father and sister, steal Blue from under their noses, and run off on some hair-brained rescue mission for an entire planet, then I’m turning my back on you? How does  _ that _ make any sense?!”

“Zarkon has been like a father to me,” Keith ground out. His hand no longer rested on Lovag’s; it now sat on one of the pillows, clenched and rigid, just like the rest of his body. “He and Honerva helped _raise_ me, and now you’re just going to ignore everything they’ve done for us? For _Voltron_? This is _my emperor_ we’re talking about! _My planet_! _Our leader_! If Zarkon says he needs Voltron’s help, then it’s our jobs as paladins to give it!”

“No,” Lovag said. His tone was almost soft enough to mask the steel in his voice, but not quite. “Our job as paladins is to keep Zarkon from doing something he shouldn’t. I’m not going to help him.”

For a few seconds, Keith simply sat there, jaw working and fists clenching. Finally, he rose from the couch in one fluid movement and fixed Lovag with a glare that he hadn’t used since their first days of paladin training.

“Alright, well fine. Clearly I was mistaken,” he said lowly. Ears quivering and eyes narrowed, Lovag couldn’t help but remember that Keith was a renowned fighter, admired even within Galran ranks. “I thought we were family, but I guess that to you, blood is stronger than quintessence. I…”

For a moment, listening to how Keith’s voice nearly cracked, Lovag thought that everything might be okay. His hopes were dashed when Keith didn’t apologize and admit he was wrong. Instead, he spun on the heel of his steel-toed, standard issue military boot and marched to the door. “Goodbye, Lovag,” Keith said, right before he stepped through the threshold and the door slid shut behind him.

It would be ten thousand deca-phoebs before the two spoke to one another again.

\---

Explosions rattled the control room of Zarkon’s flagship, sending flashes of light along the metal floor, and Keith was very quickly realizing that everything was going extremely, horrendously wrong.

“Emperor Zarkon,” he began, stopping to clear his throat and banish the shaky quality of his voice. “Emperor Zarkon, why are yo — what are you  _ doing _ ?”

Keith’s emperor did not even turn, just glanced at the boy over his shoulder. The yellow tint of his eyes, brighter now than it had even been before, sent shivers down Keith’s spine, raising the miniscule hair on his arms. “Is it not obvious?” he hummed. “I’m saving Daibazaal.”

“But,” Keith protested softly. He was fairly certain his hands were shaking. “You…you’re attacking Altea, the Blue Lion —  _ Lovag. _ ” Another explosion lit up the space before Keith, rocking the Altea ship and lighting several new fires. Keith’s claws bit into his palm.

“Lovag should have joined us when he had the chance. But he decided to remain as his foolish father’s side. This is the price he must pay.” A blast of cannon fire accompanied Zarkon’s declaration; one of the hangar doors on the Altean ship slid open.

“Emperor Zarkon,” Keith said. He licked his lips, which were suddenly much too dry. “There has to be another way. Trigel and Gyrgan have already agreed to go against King Alfor and give you aid. Perhaps we don’t actually need the Blue Lion to close the ri—”

“ _ Silence, boy! _ ” Emperor Zarkon boomed. He finally turned, looming over the Red Paladin. “ _ All _ of the paladins should listen to me. They  _ belong _ to me! Don’t attempt to tell me what can and cannot be done. It is not your place nor is it your right.  _ Do you understand me?” _

Under normal circumstances, Keith would have trembled at the thought of facing Zarkon as he chewed him out and tore him apart word by word, lips curled and yellow eyes narrowed. But over the shoulder of his emperor, he spotted a blue blur zip from the Altean ship, and all thoughts of fear and caution immediately fled his mind.

Keith, still adorned in his paladin armor and bayard only a thought away, tore his gaze from Lovag’s lion and looked into Zarkon’s eyes. He listened to the laser fire that rained down upon the Altean ship and felt the battle cruiser lurch as another cannon was fired. He saw officers out of the corner of his eyes pointing at certain points on the weapons lock and heard them give orders to fire everything upon the Blue Lion. He felt the rage of his bond simmer, crackling and snarling, and he  _ knew _ that Red was telling him that Blue was in danger. That Lovag was in danger.

Keith looked into Zarkon’s eyes, realized he didn’t recognize the man he saw, and thrust his newly-summoned bayard into the battle cruiser’s main steering system.

“Yes sir,” Keith said clearly amidst the shrieking of the system’s metal and the officers in the cockpit. “I understand you perfectly.”

Then, he dismissed his bayard and socked Zarkon, Emperor of the Galran Empire, in the face.

Not a second passed before Zarkon backhanded him across the control room, slamming him into several more system and controls along the way. Sentries and guards alike instantly descended upon Keith, efficiently securing his ankles together and his arms behind his back and several officers took time away from frantically trying to recover the systems to spit on his face or kick his side as he was dragged from the room. The last thing Keith saw before the sentries and guards forced him around the corner was Zarkon, taught with rage, and the view from the battle cruiser as the steering failed, veering it away from the Altean cruiser and away from Lovag.

As he was dragged to what was undoubtedly a gruesome and terrible fate, Keith felt a shark-like grin grow on his face; it was one he’d learned from Lovag.

\---

The next time someone asked Lovag to be the frontman in an intergalactic war, he was gonna say, “Nope, nadda, no thanks,” because war? War was  _ nuts _ .

From the moment Lovag left the safety of the Castle of Lions, his life had become a symphony of colorful explosions and violent collisions. Now, watching as the battle cruiser that had been the source of most of Lovag’s problems abruptly ceased attacking him and instead began to drift off course, a deep relief boiled up from Lovag’s stomach.

The smaller ships that surrounded and guarded the cruiser kept attacking Lovag, but he easily held them off, leading them on a wild goose chase through the stars. Lovag didn’t need to actually win against Zarkon and his forces; he just needed to buy enough time for Coran to get the Castle back online for hyperdrive, and then he and the Atlean nobles could enact a tactical retreat, regroup, and plan out the best way to take down Zarkon.

Lovag only had to spend a few more doboshes winding his way through meteors and star dust, firing (and hitting, obviously) Galran crafts only when necessary, before Coran sent a message telling Lovag to return to the castle. The paladin immediately obeyed, firing a quick volley of lasers to cover his retreat and urging blue towards the hangar doors on the castle. Blue’s paws had barely met the ground when Lovag felt a slight lurch in his stomach, signaling that the castle had successfully entered hyperdrive; he let out a breath of relief, but it also felt tinged with regret.

The next few minutes were spent making sure any damages to Blue were superficial and that they would repair themselves and slowly undressing from his armor. Finally, once his hands had stopped shaking and Lovag wasn’t imagining Keith firing on him and Blue every five seconds, he left the hangar and headed towards the control room.

The sight that greeted Lovag was not a welcome one.

Allura was arguing with his father, tears barely peeping from the corners of her eyes, and Coran stood to the side, hands wringing nervously. The other officers who were overseeing hyperdrive tried to avert their gaze from the king and his daughter, and Lovag understood why. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with an Altean broadsword.

Preferably, Lovag would have liked to turn right around and let Allura and Alfor work out their issues without dragging him into the fight, but he had barely taken two steps into the room and observed the atmosphere before Coran spotted him and called him over. Lovag felt wholly unprepared for whatever was about to come in only his armor under suit.

“Hey Coran,” Lovag said after a tick or two. He quickly slipped into a casual attitude and relaxed posture, pasting a relaxed smile on his face. He nodded at his family members. “Allura. Father.”

“Ah, Lovag,” Alfor said, turning away from Allura. Lovag saw his sister sniffle and wipe at her tears. “I’m glad you made it safely back, and we are utterly thankful to you for allowing us to retreat.”

Lovag shrugged unconcernedly. “Of course. I would never turn my back on my people.”  _ Not even for Keith. _

“I know, son,” Alfor said, and the look he gave Lovag made him wonder if his father knew exactly where his thoughts lied. “That is why I was just discussing with Allura the best option that you two have for helping our people.”

Allura tensed, and Lovag tried not to do the same. Whatever his father was about to say, he wasn’t going to like it.

“That is why I think it best that Altea protects its two best hopes by preserving them in cryopods until this war ends.”

A tick passed, then another. Lovag could still feel the loose smile glued to his face, but it soon flickered away when the full weight of his father’s words hit him.

“I’m sorry, but I think I misheard you.” Lovag made a show of reaching up and cleaning out his large, pointed ears. “It sounded like you wanted me and Allura to run away and hide,  _ abandoning our people _ ? Because that’s not happening. No way! You’re not getting rid of us until the universe is at peace and I go off to Kipiheni for a much needed vacation. Until then, the cryopods are out of the question. It’s not happening.”

“Lovag,” Alfor began. His face looked tried and lined, and Lovag wondered why he hadn’t noticed his father growing so old. “I am your king, and I believe that this is the best option for our people  _ and  _ the universe. You must obey me.”

Lovag scoffed; his fists were clenched. “The only thing I  _ must _ do is fight for what’s right! I’m the Blue Paladin, and it doesn’t matter if you’re my father  _ or _ my king, I’m not just going to leave you all here defenseless!” Allura’s head nodded swiftly from behind Alfor’s shoulder.

“ _ Lovag _ !” The shout rang throughout the silent control room, and Lovag felt his eyebrows rise. His father had never yelled at him before; not like this. “This is not up for debate! You and Allura  _ will _ go into cryopods, and Coran will go with you! It is…our only hope.”

“Your Majesty,” Coran gasped. Apparently, he had also been left in the dark on Alfor’s crazy plan.

Alfor turned to his right-hand man and his best friend. “Coran, do you not trust me?”

Lovag knew the moment he saw Coran’s shoulders droop that the fight was over. He wasn’t going to win this argument, no matter how long nor how viciously he fought; he was going to be put into a cryopod whether he liked it or not. After all, Lovag could argue with his father until his lungs ran out of air, but everyone on Altea knew that it was an impossible task to go against both his father  _ and _ Coran and win.

“Okay,” Lovag sighed. He felt his throat grow tight and his eyes begin to sting. “But you…you have to promise me that you’ll come and get me the moment it gets too hard. The  _ moment  _ you need me and Blue on the front lines.”

“My son,” Alfor said. He didn’t address Lovag’s plea for a promise. “You know I love you, and I always will.”

“Father,” Lovag sniffled, and he leapt into his king’s open arms. “I love you, too. I love you so  _ so _ much, and as soon as this war is over and I get out of that cryopod, we’re going to go eat jegkrem together. Just you and me and Allura, and it’s gonna be  _ awesome _ .”

“Of course,” King Alfor murmured. A tingling sensation began to spread from where his hand touched Lovag’s back, and Lovag felt his knees grow weak. “Now be brave, my son.”

Lovag’s last thought before everything went black was that he could never be as brave as Keith.

\---

The trial was less of a trial and more of a way for Zarkon to see Keith one last time before sentencing him to a future that could only be described as his doom. Keith knew this and had accepted this as he paced his cell, mind reaching for the reassuring feel of Red’s emotions. His lion was angry, furious on his behalf, and he felt it every time someone that was not Keith attempted to approach her.

Normally, the bond between them was magma, bubbling and roiling within the walls of their minds. Together, the two of them were dangerous, capable of setting fire to every last thing at the drop of a hat. The two were a volcano, unpredictable and unconquerable.

But for the last few quintants, ever since Keith had made his choice and was dragged to a cell, sending reassurances to the distraught Red along the way, there had been moments when their magma became explosive. Each eruption was short but intense, and it took less than a quintant for Keith to realize that each time their bond spiked in outrage and incredulity, his lion was keeping a Galran soldier from entering her cockpit.

The impressions that Red sent him and the occasional food and water helped Keith keep track of time; the cell was too deep in the depths of the battle cruiser to receive any food traffic. With only a series of guards that changed along some unknown schedule, Keith did not know what happened to Lovag, the fate of Daibazaal and the Alteans, nor whether Trigel and Gyrgan were still siding with Zarkon.

The unsettling swooping of his stomach had ceased shortly after Keith had been tossed into his cell, meaning they had at least stabilized the steering of the cruiser. However, the remaining cells in Keith’s block remained empty bar one that held a partially dissolved skeleton. Keith tried not to look into that cell too much.

In the quintants that must have passed since Keith betrayed his emperor and his people, the paladin allowed himself to do only one thing: hope. He hoped for the salvation of his home planet. He hoped for a peaceful resolution for the conflict between Alfor and Zarkon. He hoped for something more substantial and tasty than food goo. But most of all, Keith hoped for Lovag — his safety, his life, the beautiful light behind his blue eyes.

Amidst all his hoping, Keith neglected to hope for one thing: himself. Perhaps he should have done so before Zarkon, wearing a dangerous scowl and full battle armor, stormed his way into Keith’s block of cells.

“Unlock the door,” he ordered, and the guard on duty hastened to follow orders. The door’s hinges had barely begun to squeak when Zarkon shoved the guard aside and barged into Keith’s cell.

“Tell your lion to lower the barrier,” Zarkon ordered, towering over the boy. It was oddly pleasing to hear the Galran emperor sound so angry and upset, almost on the verge of desperation.

Keith started and instantly felt as if he were drowning in gratefulness. Red wasn’t just threatening what got too close; she had erected a barrier to keep anyone that wasn’t Keith from coming near. The explosions that had been ringing at the back of his mind instantly made more sense, and in his mind’s eye, Keith saw Red, sitting erect and prideful in her hangar as countless Galran soldiers attempted to get past the red dome that kept her safe. She was waiting, patiently, for her paladin’s return.

Well, if Red was brave enough to form a barrier to keep the Galrans out, then it was the least Keith could do to form a barrier of his own.

“No,” he told Zarkon, and he didn’t flinch when the emperor took a step closer.

“Very well, boy,” he murmured. His voice was hard and his eyes drilled holes through Keith. “We’ll simply have to find a new Red Paladin. One who will actually listen to reason.”

A sudden movement, a signaling of his hand, had three guards coming forward and securing Keith’s arms behind his back once more. His ankles were tied together, and the guards dragged him past Zarkon and out of his cell. Keith attempted to headbutt the shortest one’s nose, but only got a fist to the gut for his efforts.

“It won’t work!” Keith called, glaring over his shoulder as he was muscled down the hall. Zarkon leisurely exited Keith’s cell and looked in the paladin’s direction. “Red will never give up on me! Our bond is too strong to break, so you can’t just —!”

“I think you’ll find,” Zarkon interrupted, deep voice scratching along the walls of the hallway. “That bonds can be broken quite easily, and that the Red Lion will be quite open to choosing another paladin once her old one is dead.”

A dark chuckle squirmed into Keith’s ears as he was dragged around a corner and out of sight. Fear now began to invade his thoughts alongside the raging inferno of Red. Their bond was heating, beginning to boil over, and Keith instantly tried to assuage her anger.

_ No, _ he insisted, elbow clunking against the breastplate of a guard. The battle cruiser was filled to capacity, and while Zarkon and his officers might be bloodthirsty and war criminals in the making, Keith couldn’t bring himself to condemn the rest of the passengers. Keith’s family was the other paladins, and he didn’t know if they were on board or if any of his few Galran friends were present either.  _ Red, stand down. If you attack, the entire cruiser will end up imploding. I-I can’t risk it. _

He also couldn’t risk Lovag being somewhere on board and Keith just not hearing about it.

The Red Lion’s anger only grew, now partially directed at her paladin, but Keith remained resolute as he approached the loading bays of the cruiser. Any attempt to elbow, stomp on, or incapacitate one of his three guards was met with a sharp blow, so by the time Keith was dragged over to the bay next to the escape pods, he was limping and had many forming bruises.

However, all thoughts of pain fled his mind as he was urged past the main docking bay, then the main loading bay, then the smaller escape pod bays. Keith didn’t stop until they reached the end of the hall and looked upon the last remaining bay: the drifters. Stocked only with small, person sized tubes, the drifters were an option for any soldier killed in the line of duty. It was considered honorable to drift among the stars for eternity, kept from harm in the glass coffin and becoming one with the galaxy. Keith had always liked the idea whenever he thought of it in passing.

Keith liked it decidedly less as he realized that he was about to be drifted alive.

One soldier released Keith to prepare a pod and Keith took the opportunity. Smashing his bound feet on one guard’s foot, Keith shoved his head back into the throat of another. The third guard turned at the commotion in time to see Keith ram his shoulder into the first guard’s nose, then begin to perform a frantic, aggressive hopping motion towards the only door. Had Keith been untied, his escape would have been relatively simple, but in the face of being bound hand and foot, Keith was not even halfway to the door before being tackled by two of the guards. The second guard was still on the ground, attempting to catch his breath.

Struggling did little against his captors, whose guards were firmly up in the face of his escape attempt, and nice by nice, Keith was dragged toward the prepped pod.

“Wait, p-please,” Keith started. He hated the choked quality of his voice, but he hated the empty expanse of the small pod even more. “You don’t have to do this, please! Zarkon needs to be stopped; he needs to be—”

The last guard was now off the floor, and together, the three of them bodily lifted Keith into the pod, immediately sealing it and prepping it for launch. Keith, arms tied and trapped beneath his own weight in the cramped space, tried kicking at the edge of the pod and screaming pleas and obscenities alike. Nothing seemed to work, and within a few ticks, Keith felt his stomach swoop and heard a rush of air through the pod’s thick glass.

With absolutely no decorum and nothing more than a chuckle from his lying, traitorous emperor as a goodbye, Keith Kogane was launched into the unforgiving void of space somewhere between a rarely frequented asteroid belt and an abandoned ice planet known as Jéqbolygó.

His supply of oxygen immediately started to wane, and as gravity slowly began to work upon the floating coffin, Keith had two thoughts. The first was sent to his lion; it was an apology but also a bargain; a plea to protect the universe and to choose her next paladin wisely. The second was kept to himself and held tightly to his chest as the pod began to accelerate, flames flickering along the sturdy glass of Keith’s containment. Pressed against his ribs and hiding in the shadow of his heart, Lovag’s smile was a comfort as well as a regret, and it accompanied Keith Kogane into the beyond as his drifter’s coffin finally hit and everything went dark.

\---

**_TEN THOUSAND DECA-PHOEBS LATER_ **

\---

Waking up is normally a slow affair filled with sun-warmed hair and luxurious stretching. It is the stuff that overworked and impoverished Alteans fill their dreams with, and Lovag had taken great care to make sure that he experienced it almost every morning of his princely life.

But this? This being abruptly awoken and immediately cold, then falling onto an unsuspecting hideous gremlin with large flashy discs on his face? This is the stuff of  _ nightmares. _

It doesn’t take long for Lovag to scramble off of the creature, urged by his violent kicks and squeaky threats, and he quickly retreats towards where his sister is standing, also appearing mildly frozen and extremely confused. Coran is also standing to the side, legs spread and arms positioned in a ridiculous combat position. Other than the gremlin, two more intruders stand nearby. The large one with the headband seems friendly enough, but the other seems tense, and Lovag’s eyes narrow when he notices the Galra-made arm hanging from his frame.

Reassured by Coran’s and Allura’s presences, and the light thrumming of Blue’s mind against his own, Lovag forces himself to relax and throw an arm around Allura’s shoulders.

“Allura,” Lovag whispers, hand blocking his mouth from the intruders. “Where are we? And what are they? Look at their  _ ears. _ ”

“We can hear you, asshole!”

Throwing an unimpressed glance in the gremlin’s direction, Lovag scoffs. “Oh really? So you  _ can _ hear me with those hideous ears?”

“Alright, that’s i – !”

The tall one with the Galra arm steps towards the gremlin and puts his left hand – his human hand – on his shoulder. In response to his movement, Lovag tightens his arm around Allura’s shoulder and shifts slightly in front of her. His sister huffs in frustration, but Lovag ignores her through years of practice.

“Pidge,” the guy says. “Just calm down.”

Pidge, which is honestly a perfect name for the nightmarish boy standing before Lovag, huffs and crosses his arm, turning a fierce glare upon Lovag. His circular glass pieces flash threateningly, but the man with the Galra arm seems to take Pidge’s silence as complacency and drops his hand from his shoulder.

“Anyway,” the man says, and steps forward with his Galra hand held out. “I’m sorry about all that. But, um, I’m Shiro and I’m guessing this is your castle?”

Lovag firmly steps all the way in front of Allura and waves a hand at Coran, who has inched closer and remains in his combat position, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. He looks at the robotic hand and ignores it, clenching his hands by his side and narrowing his eyes instead.

“The castle is our father’s,” Lovag says curtly. He forces himself to focus on the matter at hand. Once he deals with these intruders, he can pull up the castle’s mainframe and uncover everything that he wants to know. Where he is,  _ when _ he is, and most importantly, where his father is. “Now maybe you’d like to explain why you have Galra tech attached to your body?”

The man – Shiro – flinches and finally lowers his hand. He appears uncertain and almost scared, but Lovag refuses to let down his guard even for a second.

“I…well, it’s kind of a long story,” Shiro says. His right hand raises to clasp at the back of his neck, and it is a surprisingly bashful movement from what is undoubtedly a deadly weapon.

“Okay, then abbreviate it.” Lovag smiles, but it is nowhere near his normal charming and carefree grin. It is all teeth, sharp and dangerous, and the gleam in his eye has Pidge and the third intruder stepping back. Impressively, Shiro does not move, just locks his muscles and seems to brace himself.

“I’m a pilot from a planet called Earth, and while I was on a mission with two scientists to the edge of our solar system, we were kidnapped by the Galra empire. I’ve spent the last year as their prisoner, but my memory is…it’s fuzzy. I don’t remember most of it, but I do know that they gave me this arm right before I managed to escape and return to Earth.”

Lovag’s smile dissolves in the face of Shiro’s story and he raises an eyebrow. “Okay, sketchiness of this so-called ‘Earth’ aside, how did you even get here? You said you were on the edge of your solar system, so is that all your planet is capable of? I don’t understand how you traveled from some backwater planet to here, or how you found the castle in the first place.”

“Ah, well, you see…I think I have an explanation for that.” The big man, solidly built and wearing a bright yellow headband that admittedly works quite well with his skin tone, steps forward. Despite his size, his movements are small and meek, and Lovag rocks back on his heels in the face of the man’s unassuming presence.

“And you are?” he questions, arms crossing over his chest.

“Name’s Hunk, and I think we accidentally found one of your magic-robot-lion-things.”

Everything freezes, Allura and Coran sucking in identical breaths of shock and Blue grumbling in the back of Lovag’s mind. The emotion is indecipherable, but Lovag still feels as if someone has sucked all the air from the room. Trigel and Gyrgan are nowhere in sight, and the way this…this  _ Earthling _ is speaking…

“What do you mean,” Lovag asks, voice soft and dangerous in the silence of the room. “You found one of the lions?”

“We found the Yellow Lion,” interjected Shiro, speaking much more confidently than he had when asked about his time as a Galra prisoner. “When I escaped from the Galra, I crash-landed back on Earth. Our military…they grabbed and sedated me, but Pidge and Hunk caught wind of my arrival got me out. After that, Hunk followed this feeling of a weird energy and led us to a nearby cavern. That’s where we found the Yellow Lion, and when Hunk touched the shield, it let us into its cockpit and flew us straight out of Earth’s atmosphere. We ran into a few Galran ships, but Hunk and the lion neutralized them. Next thing we knew, we were flying through a wormhole that brought us here. And that’s…about it.”

Lovag examined the three intruders, studying the tilt of their mouths and the wrinkles between their eyebrows. The other two people, likely Hunk and Pidge, had nodded frequently during Shiro’s tale, supporting everything he said, and while his story seems plausible, Lovag’s mind raises questions and he attempts to answer them.

“How did you escape the Galra exactly?” Lovag asks Shiro, suddenly and without warning.

The man jerks slightly and frowns, the worry between his brows deepening into an unbreachable trench. “I don’t know,” he admits, and his discomfort is back now that Lovag is focusing on his time with the Galra. “Like I said, I don’t remember hardly any of my time with them.”

“Uh huh,” Lovag says, still quite unconvinced. “And how exactly are we supposed to trust what you say when you’ve got this super sketch memory problem going on? I mean, for all we know, Earth is actually part of the Galra empire and you’re actually here to take over the Castle of Lions and steal Blue!”

“Blue? You mean the Blue Lion?!” the small gremlin (Pidge?) exclaims, tearing Lovag’s attention away from the increasingly exasperated expression on Shiro’s face. “You mean one of the other lions we saw in the vision? You guys have it?!”

Lovag’s face scrunches in confusion. He looks over his shoulder at Allura and Coran, but they seem just as lost as is, shrugging and shaking their heads. Lovag turns back to the intruders and finallys drops his combat stance. This tactic of idiocy is definitely not a Galra tactic and the fact that Pidge saw a vision…Lovag clenches his fists and crosses his arms at the implications.

“Yeah,” he preens, easing into the pracied persona of a spoiled, arrogant prince to hide his unease. “The Blue Lion. I’m her paladin and I don’t think she would appreciate three intru–”

“Lovag,” Allura interrupts in a strangled voice that instantly grabs his attention and doesn’t let go. She has made her way to the console closest to Coran and has pulled up what seems to be an abridged version of the castle’s database. From his vantage point, nothing seems out of place, but then Allura magnifies the data located in the bottom right corner of the holographic terminal.

“It’s been that long?” Lovag whispers. Confident that Shiro, Hunk, and Pidge won’t be able to do anything too harmful and Coran will keep an eye on them, Lovag walks towards his sister and stops just behind her shoulder.

“No,” she replies, and the sound of tears thick in her throat is as jarring as it is unfamiliar. Allura  _ never _ cries, and especially not in front of her baby brother. “It’s been longer.”

With practiced movements that come from years helping their father manage and lead the ship, Allura swipes to the star calendar and zooms out. It now shows the data alongside the positions of the stars in their vicinity, but beside that is a devastating, damning, nightmarish series of number that sends Lovag’s heart skidding to a halt and heat boiling behind his eyes.

“Oh,” Lovag says, starting at the current year. He hears Coran’s gasp somewhere to his right but pays it no mind. Lovag’s only thoughts are for the time that has passed, because according to the castle’s systems, which are never wrong, it has been ten thousand deca-phoebs since Lovag went into the cryopods with his sister and his father’s closest friend and advisor.

Staring at proof that the universe and all the people in it have left him behind in a time undoubtedly forgotten, Lovag feels a sinking in his gut and unshakable knowledge that he has no idea what he should do next.

\---

Everything in Keith’s world is cold, enraptured by nothing and preserved by everything. There is no light nor darkness, and thought is an idea that no longer exists. Life is but a memory and death is only a thought away, but thoughts don’t exist in this world of ice and timelessness.

Time is a curious thing, full of twists and turns and inconsistencies. It is untrustworthy and the worst enemy a being can have as they go through life, with ticks turning into dobashes turning into vargas. However, time also introduces some of the best things in life. It opens doors to wonderful, magical things like nunvill, later curfews, and other things that authority figures would never approve of. Keith knows this, but he exists outside of this knowledge, only existing in a sense of vague awareness and frozen limbs. Time exists, he thinks, or he would if he were able, but for now, there is no time nor thoughts nor life nor Lovag. There is only cold.

Everything in Keith’s world is cold, until it isn’t.

\---

It doesn’t take them long to locate and secure the Green Lion, and while Shiro and Pidge go fetch it, Lovag takes Hunk along with him to awaken Blue in her hangar. She is glad to see him, and being so close helps comfort the rolling sea within his head. By the time everyone is gathered in the control room once more, waiting for Allura to locate the Red Lion, Lovag feels considerably more at peace.

Allura hard at work searching nearby galaxies and Coran piddling on some wires that need replacing, Lovag discusses Earth culture with Hunk and Pidge. Shiro watches on, seeming vaguely amused.

“Wait wait wait,” Lovag says, waving his arms dramatically. “Skin color is important to Earthlings?!”

“Yes!” Pidge exclaims and Hunks nods along. “We have this thing called race that is this weird social construct and allows society to judge people based on their skin color, but in actuality all it should really be able to do is help people guess our ethnicities. People are just judgemental jerks most of the time.”

“Ethnicity?” Lovag asks, rolling the odd word along his tongue. “What’s that?”

“It’s like…what area of Earth a person is from and what culture they belong to, kinda.” Hunk’s explanation is simplistic and Lovag finds himself grateful that the translator doesn’t warp any of the words. Then, Lovag actually processes everything that Hunk and Pidge have taught him about race and ethnicity and he smiles mischievously.

“Name a territory or region on your planet!” Lovag orders, bouncing his knees in excitement. The Earthlings are going to  _ flip. _

“Cuba!” Hunk blurts out. Pidge gives him an odd glance and he shrugs helplessly. “I did a report on it right before we left Earth. It’s been on mind.”

“Nah, this…Cuba place is fine!” Lovag insists. “How dark are the people who live there?”

“A bit lighter than yours. And their hair is usually black, plus, you know, no pointy ears or weird…these things.” Hunk gestures under his own eyes and Lovag nods understandingly.

“Okay got it!” Urged on by his excitement to shift in over ten thousand deca-phoebs (which is still weird to think about), Lovag instantly starts to will his skin to soften at his ears and lighten a few shades. He even alters his hairstyle a bit, making it shorter as it darkens from its blinding white to a dark, silky black. His markings are the last things to go, and he wills them to hide beneath his skin as he looks proudly over at a gob smacked Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro.

“Y-you’re a shapeshifter?!” Pidge screams, then their (because that’s what Hunk and Shiro call them, so Lance does the same) face bursts into a blinding grin. “That’s  _ awesome _ ! Do you realize the possibilities behind this? The studies we could conduct? You have the potential to be a super spy!”

Lovag chuckles and stands. He had made his new form a bit taller than his Altean form, and he enjoys the extra height it gives him. “Yeah, I guess. Alteans usually use it for diplomatic reasons, though.”

“Still!” Pidge insists. “This could make you into our secret weapon! You could disguise yourself as a Galra, sneak onto Zarkon’s main ship, then boom! No more evil emperor!  It’s amazing!”

“Lovag is not going anywhere near Zarkon,” interjects Allura before rubbing at her chin and tilting her head thoughtfully. “Although, you’re right about using it to surprise Zarkon. As an original paladin, Lovag knew Zarkon personally. He even fought against his forces at the beginning of the war. Perhaps…perhaps it would be best, Lovag, if you were to pose as just another Earthling paladin. It  _ would _ make you less of a target.”

Lovag raises a surprised eyebrow at Allura’s blatant protectiveness. “Yeah, I mean I guess it would…If you think that hiding who I am would be for the best.” It is Allura’s expression, a bit lost and devastation swimming in her eyes, that convinces him, and Lovag reasons that pretending to be someone else would keep Zarkon from sending every battleship available after him. “And what about you?”

Allura appears to think over the idea but eventually shakes her head. “Even if I did assume a disguise, it wouldn’t be very convincing. Father is…Without Father, I’m the only one who can operate the Castle of Lions. Zarkon would know it was me instantly.”

Frustrated by his sister’s sound logic, Lovag frowns and shrugs compliantly. “I guess you’re right. Guess I need a new name to go with my new disguise, huh?” Lovag pops his hip out and rests his fists at his belts, giving his most winning smile. As far as he can tell, Earth names are remarkably similar to those from Vilagan culture, so Lovag runs through the most common Vilagan names he knows of and tosses them together.

Dramatically, because that is Lovag’s favorite way to do anything, he leaps onto his empty seat and spreads his arms. “Ladies and gentlemen! Earthlings and Pidge! Lend your ears to this royal creed! In order to match my dashing new appearance and most recent persona, I shall from now on be known solely by the exquisite name of Lance McClain!”

“Your last name isn’t Cuban,  _ Lance _ .”

“Shut  _ up _ , Pidge!”

\---

Lance watches as his sister delicately places her hand on the barrier. It remains solid, a tangible wall underneath her fingertips, and Lance remembers watching this same process five hundred and sixty-four times over with the Blue Lion, with his own father trying to awaken the Red Lion tens of thousands of deca-phoebs ago. He knows, as soon as the barrier refuses to disappear underneath Allura’s touch, that this will not work. The Red Lion is the most temperamental of them all, and she has only ever had one paladin. A paladin that she picked from lightyears away; a paladin that was born to be her pilot; a paladin that has been lost not only to Zarkon but to time as well.

The Red Lion wants Keith, and Lance wishes he could tell her that he feels the same way, argument and betrayal aside. He wishes that he could curl up in the Red Lion’s cockpit, where Keith used to sit, pictures and ice cream in tow, and reminisce about the good old days. Maybe they could cry together a bit and watch a sappy romance movie for healing purposes. But no, because Keith is gone and the Red Lion refuses to accept that. She refuses to let down her barrier for anyone other than Keith, even if it is Allura.

“Please,” his sister is pleading, both hands now fisted against the steadfast barrier. “We must get you off this ship, but we cannot do that unless you let me pilot you!”

“’Lura,” Lance murmurs. It’s not going to work; he knew it from the moment he saw the Red Lion, poised and strong in her isolation.

“You  _ must _ help us stop Zarkon! Do you not even care that he has desecrated the universe that you fought to protect?”

“Allura, stop.”

“You’re supposed to be a defender of the universe! It’s doesn’t matter that you sided with Zarkon at first! What matters is right now! Do you think Keith would want you to just sit here and watch the universe crumble! Keith would want you to fight! Keith would—!”

“ _ Allura _ !”

The barrier, beaten at by Allura’s small fists and splashed on by the tears that have begun to stream down her face, remains. But the eyes…the eyes! They’re no longer dark and empty, but glowing, the molten yellow that Lance has come to associate with help, with backup, with safety. The Red Lion is awake, and despite the barrier, Allura still turns to him, mouth spread in a wondrous smile.

“Lance!” she cries. “I did it! The Red Lion, she…she’s awake! We can—”

Allura is cut off by the Red Lion standing in one smooth motion, shooting a hole in the wall of the ship, and taking off into space. Lance, still used to the brashness and suddenness of the Red Lion and her paladin, manages to grab hold of the door terminal and Allura’s arm. He hits the failsafe, closing the backup hatch and disrupting the vacuum that had been attempting to sweep the two of them out of the ship.

Lance and Allura collapse onto the floor of the ship with little grace, hangar now empty and shocked expressions etched onto both of their faces.

“Did that just…” Allura begins.

“Yup,” Lance finishes. He remembers to pop the ‘p.’

“Oh,” Allura says. Her voice is rather faint.

“Yup,” Lance replies. The ‘p’ is less enthusiastic this time, and it matches their demeanor as they sneak their way back through the Galran ship, avoiding sentries and guards as best they can. By the time the find Shiro and Pidge, a small group of prisoners are alongside them inside an escape pod. It is not just two humans, but at least a dozen beings of different species who turn their expectant gazes to Lance and Allura when they approach. Most of them don’t even know what they are supposed to be expecting, but the atmosphere is there, like a damp blanket, and it cannot be ignored.

“Did you find it?” Shiro finally asks. His face says he already knows the answer.

“I…yes.” Allura’s brows and furrowed and she bites at her lip. Lance puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Red blasted a hole in the side of the ship and flew off,” he says. Best not to beat around the bush. “We don’t know where she is now.”

The ride back to the Castle of Lions is silent and filled with Pidge not thinking of their father and Matt, Allura not thinking of how she is following in her father’s footsteps, and Lance not thinking of the rightful paladin of the Red Lion.

The downtrodden mood remains for the next few quintants as Allura tries and fails to find the Red Lion’s signature once more. Coran prepares the Castle for flight so that they can properly search out the Red Lion once more. Shiro and Pidge arrange destinations for the prisoners they freed. Hunk stress bakes and Lance serves as his alien guinea pig whenever he isn’t helping Coran fix things around the Castle. Eventually, the Castle gets an alert that a Galran ship is approaching, but due to the tireless efforts of Coran, Allura, and Lance, the ship is able to lift off and avoid conflict all together. The spirits of the team rise with the Castle’s altitude, but they cannot help but feel like they’re waiting on a moment that will never come. After all, there is no way to get the Black Lion without the Red Lion, and there is definitely no Voltron without the Red nor Black Lions.

\---

Everything in Keith’s world is cold, until it isn’t.

It takes time for him to realize that his existence is no longer suspended, hanging between to and fro and trapped in a timeless, frozen wasteland. At first, the faint prickling in his fingertips – the first thing he has truly felt in an eternity – is almost enough to convince Keith that he has died, but then the prickling turns to fiery, burning pain and Keith begins to categorize all the troubles he could cause for the universe if it has actually sentenced him to eternal damnation.

The pain is all encompassing, flowing through his limbs like lava and igniting his chest like an explosion, but eventually, ash fills Keith’s mouth and sparks dance behind his eyes and he realizes that amidst the pain, there is a hard surface to his back and a thrumming in his mind. The thrumming is what Keith fixates on as the pain slowly ebbs.

Everything dims from its inflamed agony to soreness and more prickling, and Keith flicks his ears and takes in his surroundings. Sound are minimal other than the familiar, tell-tale buzz of a machine running. The air is recycled but clean, and Keith gasps in relief; he relishes the burn of it down his throat. The floor, hard and heated, helps to ground him, and finally the thrumming in Keith’s head turns to sensations and thoughts and feelings, and everything comes rushing back.

Keith’s eyes fly open and drink in the sight of Red’s cockpit. The shaking in his limbs sets in soon after.

Waves of heat and spikes of cold turns tormenting Keith, but somehow he hauls himself form the floor, fingers trembling and more of a dark blue than their normal purple. He collapses into the pilot’s seat with little ceremony and curls into a small, impenetrable ball. Red purrs in his mind so loud that it travels through the speakers and surrounds him, a steady rumble that calms his hiccuping breaths and racing heart.

Time passes and Keith takes note of Red’s periodic bells and whistles. The hiss of used air being renewed back into a healthy mix of breathable gases occurs every thirty dobashes, and Keith counts four of them before the shaking in his hand begins to subside. The rattle of the heater recalibrating happens every two varga, and Keith counts three of them before he slowly uncurls from his ball. Red’s purr is constant, and it doesn’t let up even when Keith puts his feet on the floor and wraps his hands around Red’s controls. If anything, it grows stronger.

“Hey girl,” Keith rasps, surprising himself with the weakness of his vocal chords. Red’s purr increases and Keith smiles, a weak tremulous thing.

Slowly, Keith recounts his memory, from the control room to his cell to the nothingness after being drifted. His view from Red’s cockpit shows a barren tundra several hundred feet below him, ice stretching over and disfiguring the landscape. Keith assumes that he crashed on this ice planet instead of suffocating in the endless void of space like the Galra had hoped. A fierce happiness blooms in Keith’s chest when he imagines how angry they’ll be that he’s defied expectations and beat the odds. Besting people’s expectations always has been one of his favorite past times.

The cold mostly gone from his system and Red’s natural heat wrapped firmly around him, Keith pulls up Red’s database and freezes. His guess as to where he is had been mostly correct, only half a quadrant or so off, and the information Red has gathered about the planet beneath them matches what Keith has assumed from his view of the surface. But a series of numbers in the corner of Red’s screen sends everything inside Keith screeching to a halt, and Keith quickly dismisses the projection before everything can start again, too fast and out of control.

Tightly gripping whatever calm he can manage, Keith makes a list of what he knows.

He knows about when he was drifted. Not the exact quintant, but he hadn’t been in Zarkon’s cells for too long, so he can narrow down that time to within a movement.

He knows, now, according to Red, a mystical robot who probably knows him better than he knows himself and hasn’t changed her calendar system in all the time they’ve known each other, what the current day is. Back on Daibazaal, it would have been in the middle of the cold season, when people stuff rags into their armor and develop thicker fur.

Keith only has fur on his ears, but it is thin and fine, because it had been the beginning of the warm season when the war broke out.

Despite his desperation and denial, Keith knows that he’s been in the ice for phoebs, and with a sinking feeling that does not even begin to encompass how much could have changed in that time, Keith up pulls Red’s database.

He doesn’t look at the date again, not eager to send himself spiraling, but instead he has Red send out a tracking signal. It only takes a few moments for a blip to appear on the screen, a cluster of colors located many galaxies away.

Shoulders wound tight and jaw clenched, Keith slowly stands from his chair, popping his back ( _ of course he had been so tense and sore; he’d been under ice for over half a deca-phoeb _ ). Systematically, he checks Red’s condition and his rations and changes into the familiar tightness of the Red Paladin armor. He summons his bayard just to feel the weight of it in his hand, then dismisses it back to his suit.

Finally, Keith returns to the controls and settles into his chair. Red, a constant reassurance in the back of his mind, sends a question through their bond, and Keith answers immediately.

“Yeah, Red,” Keith says, not knowing if he’s heading towards Lovag or Zarkon or someone entirely different. There’s no way of telling which side of the war has control of the lions, but Keith figures he can always observe from a distance before making contact. He’s had plenty of stealth training, even if he often neglects to use it. In this moment of timelessness, when Keith’s world has moved on but he hasn’t taken a single step, Keith knows that there is only one path that the Red Paladin can take in what is surely a war-ravaged universe.

“Take us to the other lions.”

\---

Of all the things that could have happened to the paladins on their way to go help Hunk’s new girlfriend-no-she’s-just-a-friend- _ really, _ coming across a downed craft was certainly not the most outlandish. But Lance had still been shocked when he caught sight of the Vadazian crew woman, and he had swiftly averted his gaze, heart pounding and memories spiraling.

The Vadazian is named Nyma, and while Lance has little interest in her sickly sweet smiles and fluttering lashes, the familiarity of her wide wrists and styled headpiece is comforting in a way the past few weeks have not been.

The paladins take no time in noticing Lance’s eagerness to speak to Nyma and hear about the current state of her planet. He hears them poke fun behind his back and sees their eyes roll when he gives Nyma smile after easy smile and wink after affectionate wink, but she says nothing and ignores their jabs. Allura and Coran, at least, give him understanding glances. Besides, Lance’s ears should not be this sharp in his human form, so he lets it go and continues to allow Nyma’s very presence to recover and remind Lance of memories that he has only now realized deserve to be treasured.

Lance grew up a prince, an important member of the royal household, and while his widowed father and older sister had doted on him at every opportunity, Lance had often been left alone, in need of supervision and guidance. After going through five trial runs with various Altean nannies, all of whom Lance had vetoed with loud and obnoxious resoluteness, the sixth candidate had walked in Lance’s rooms right before an important dinner that the prince had been told in no uncertain terms he must attend. Thrown off by the strangeness of beady eyes and padded fingers in the place of colorful markings and delicate features, Lance had not fought the man as he was ushered into royal blue robes and horrid shoes that pinches his toes. He arrived at the dinner an entire ten doboshes early.

The king had been impressed by the discipline Lance had shown at the hands of this newcomer, and by the next morning, Tanar, a Vadazian teacher by trade, was assigned as Lance’s new nanny. The young prince had groaned and argued and even attempted sabotage on a  few occasions, but Tanar had weathered it all.

The two had eventually developed a deep respect and a reluctant love for each other by the time he went through the hell that is Altean puberty. When Lance had been chosen as the blue Paladin, after all the chaos had died down and Lance had finally extracted his ecstatic sister’s arms from around his neck, Tanar had been who he sprinted to, smile pulling his face apart and the news sprouting from his tongue.

Old and stern, Tanar had been a constant in Lance’s life from when he had been a small, annoying child to when he was flying all over the universe, saving lives as a part of Voltron. Outside of his own family and a certain Red Paladin who Lance is carefully avoiding thinking about, Lance knows that it is Tanar’s absence that has carved the biggest hole in his heart. The pain of losing such an old friend is constant and sharp, but Lance finds that looking into Nyma’s open and serene face acts as a balm of sorts.

It is with Tanar’s face staining the inside of his eyelids that Lance agrees to wander the planet with Nyma. Blue offers to give the two of them a lift with a single image, and Lance agrees, pleased by Nyma’s obvious awe at the magnificence of Blue’s cockpit. Tanar’s eyes had taken on the same shimmering glow when Lance had first shown him around his lion.

Eventually, the two find a nice pond to sit next to, and Lance grins thoughtlessly when Nyma leans in close, looking up at him through her lashes. She makes a joke that he has heard Tanar say dozens of times, and he laughs louder and longer than strictly necessary, but he enjoys the scratch of it on this throat.

Doboshes fade to traded stories and shared laughter, and then Nyma leans in, noticeably and with her chin tilting upwards, and it shocks Lance, shocks him into jolting back and catching his balance on the ground behind him. One moment, he is questioning why he let his emotions for Tanar cloud his judgement when it was clear that Nyma was pursuing a relationship that Lance is most definitely  _ not _ willing to offer right now, and the next, Nyma is darting forward, dragging his unbalanced arms further behind him, and securing him, shocked and betrayed and internally furious, to the tree that had been directly next to Lance.

He watches as Nyma pulls away, simpers some sassy comment that leaves the taste of bile and betrayal and rage in his mouth, and calls for Rolo to  _ pick her up, she got it, the Blue Paladin is neutralized.  _ He watches as Blue is pulled, unmoving but almost placidly, into Nyma’s and Rolo’s ship, which is definitely no longer broken down and most likely sabotaged by its own crew. He watches as his biggest anchor is detached from him, leaving him adrift in the mysterious sea of this new time, and with a deep sigh, he calls his team, grateful that he never actually took his helmet off while talking to Nyma.

\---

Entirely too long and approximately half of Keith’s rations after he wakes up in the cockpit, the blip on Red’s screen starts to move towards the center. The blip stopped swerving off in different directions nearly two quintants ago, giving Keith the chance he needs to encourage Red forward, mechanics whirring and engines roaring. His scanners say that a planet lies dead ahead, an asteroid belt resting nearby, and as the blip grows ever closer on the screen, Keith points Red towards the distant planet at top speed.

The two have just begun to feel the gravitational effects of the planet when a shuttle hurdles from the surface, bursts through the atmosphere, and heads away from Keith, directly toward the asteroid belt. Caution has Keith pulling back on the throttle, slowing Red’s advance, and Keith is relieved by his decision when two lions follow the shuttle’s path not thirty ticks later.

The Green and Yellow Lions are nearly comforting in their familiarity, and their presence still sends Keith’s heart hammering in his chest and his hands yanking Red to a sudden stop. Red hums with displeasure at the turn of events, and as Keith pats her main console in an attempt to calm her temper, he attempts to calmly think through his options.

In the end, Keith fails to do it calmly, but he does decide with a frantic haste that his original plan was to spy on the Lions and he can, theoretically, still do that. With the sinking knowledge that everything can change in only a few short months and that this is really just a last ditch effort, Keith turns on his comms and carefully navigates to the private frequency the Lions always used. He keeps his mic off and refuses to adjust to the frequency perfectly, but when slightly garbled voices filter from Red’s speakers, Keith allows himself a chuckle at his torn of luck and paladins’ lack of change.

At first, Keith does not recognize the people speaking, and he almost chalks it up to the bad connection until realizes that their accents are unfamiliar as well. Translating devices ensure that everyone communicates with the common language but different accents belong to different regions and planets. These voices do not have the floating lilt of Daibazaal, deadly but smooth like a blade in motion, nor do they have the rounded syllables and hardened consonants of Altea. Keith has travelled to countless parts of the universes, has fooled around with accents on his own, and has been coached by Lovag to copy any drawl after only hearing a number of words, but he doesn’t recognize this way of speaking and that sets Keith on edge.

Driven by his curiosity and the gut feeling that Keith is missing something crucial, Keith connects fully to the frequency then leans back to listen.

“We’ll never get through this asteroid field,” someone is saying, their high voice implying a surprisingly young age. Keith wonders if the other lions had picked children to replace their lost paladins, just as Red had picked him when he was an infant. 

The next voice negates Keith’s thoughts, an undeniably older and much louder voice responding, “Maybe I can just bust through!” The volume of the following grunt and muffled crash jars Keith and he shakes his head to clear the feedback from his ears. He thinks the loud one says something about being wrong and bad ideas, and from the way these two paladins are acting, Keith gathers that they are far from being experienced pilots. They are undoubtedly out of their depth.

There isn’t a conscious decision on Keith’s part to urge Red from floating into movement, but somehow the two end up on the same page, hurtling along just outside the atmosphere of the planet. Red’s cameras pick up and magnify the three lions, and they seem dwarfed by the asteroid belt they are halted at the edge of. Keith does not let up on Red’s controls, not even when he notices how the asteroids are moving, bouncing off one another, and how the louder paladin is apologizing over the comm.

Red manages to snag a visual of the original shuttle from between the shifting rocks, and Keith imagines that he can see the Blue Lion inside of it, staring right at him and telling him to make his move. Keith triangulates his entry point and urges Red to go faster, to make it into the melee before the gap closes.

Eyes locked onto his path and mind firmly ignoring that he’ll be flying right between the remaining lions in only a few ticks, Keith barely hears when a third, older voice comes over the comm, tone determined and accent odd and unfamiliar. “The moving boulders present a problem, but even if I had access to the Black Lion, I think it’d be too big to make it through. Doesn’t matter if I used a pod or smaller ship; I still wouldn’t be able to pilot through such a dense belt.” The frustration is evident in his voice, and Keith’s bond with Red informs him of the same emotion boiling within the two lions and their paladins.

Keith tells himself that he just doesn’t want the paladins getting in his way as he silently signals Red to turn on his mic. He tells himself that it’s not relief he feels when the older person is not Zarkon but still talking as if the Black Lion is his to pilot as he adjusts Red’s course infinitesimally. He tells himself that so long alone has made him more sympathetic to their obvious distress as he takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.

He tells them, “You don’t have to,” gruff and reluctant and with the same accent they’ve been using, as he slams his knuckles into Red’s console and hurtles past the lions and into a gap between two asteroids; they crash together moments after he’s through.

Various sounds of shock and surprise blast through Red’s speakers – the youngest voice lets out a heated, “What the  _ quiznak _ ?!” – but Keith quickly mutes his comm and blasts toward where Red had last seen the shuttle.

It takes him little time to find the ship, and for the first time since Keith awoke half frozen in Red’s cockpit, he feels awake and in control. He corkscrews away from a smaller rock and throws himself into a dive to avoid being crushed in another collision. Keith veers and flips and even pulls off a move that he’s only done once in a flashy race against Lovag during paladin training. Red responds to his every whim, switching seamlessly between flying and running and flying again. Hardly any time at all passes before Keith pulls behind the ship and he no longer needs Red’s cameras to keep a visual on it.

Naturally, the ship then begins firing at him, and Keith falls into the practiced routine of evasive maneuvers, and with no small amount of grumpiness and hostility, he fires back. Far from being the markman that Lovag is, Keith takes far too many shots before the ship actually takes damage. His flying keeps him away from any harm, and once one lucky shot blasts through one of the ship’s engines, Keith guides Red forward, lands on the back of the ship, and digs her claws into the flimsy shell.

The Red Lion is not known for her brute strength, but the combined fury of her and her paladin makes it easy work to pry the metal apart and peer in at the occupants.

The pilot isn’t a species that Keith is familiar with, and he stares up at the Red Lion with a kind of frustrated awe. His copilot seems to be some kind of robot, probably with advanced intelligence, and the woman that sits in the shooter’s chair, glaring and cradling her apparently injured arm, surprises Keith. He assumes her injury is from the shot that ruined the engine, but the woman’s beady eyes, flared wrists, and odd hair bring back memories that Keith had carefully been keeping packed away.

Lovag’s head butler had been a Vadazian, the same as this woman, and he had been kind. He had never seemed to mind Keith’s and Lovag’s sleepovers or impromptu movie nights. In fact, he had often seemed to encourage them with later awakenings the morning after Lovag shared his bed with Keith or extra helpings of kukorica to go hand-in-hand with whatever sappy romances Lovag was forcing Keith to endure. Still, personal experiences aside, the stare that Keith bestows upon the Vadazian is nothing but a flicker when compared to his single minded focus on the elephant – or well, lion – in the ship.

The Blue Lion, as always, looks regal and unruffled. She is the eye to a furious storm of Keith’s and Red’s making, and even with the two of them so close, her eyes do not flicker and her paws do not move. She is a statue under the weight of their stares.

Red hums a warning into their bond, pulling Keith’s stare away from Blue’s frozen might and to the visual alert that she has pulled up on her screen. Keith hadn’t been able to catch the ship until the far edge of the asteroid belt, and now, with deadly moving rocks far more sparse, the Yellow and Green Lions have caught up and surrounded the ship, creating a threatening barrier. Keith feels his lips curl into a snarl.

With a flick of his ears inside his helmet and a subtle nod of his head, Keith lets Red know to unmute his comm again, and he is immediately assaulted by the paladins’ abrasive accents.

“–be we all just imagined the gruff, scary, mildly terrifying voice talking to us over the comm?” the loud one is saying. Keith raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow. “Maybe the Red Lion was actually piloting itself? That would explain how it was so good at flying because… _ wow _ . Hey Pidge, do you think that it’s possible to alter the lions to give them the ability to speak?”

“Hmmm,” the younger one, Pidge apparently, says in a voice laced with mad genius. Keith would bet his bayard that they are in the Green Lion, curiosity searing behind the blank yellow eyes of their lion. “Well, we already know the lions are capable of communication, so it’d really just be a matter of getting them to convert their conscious thought into something that resembles a language instead of fragmented feelings and impressions. Then, we’d have to install some kind of voice box since they’re only capable of roaring at the moment…”

“Guys,” the older one interrupts. He sounds concentrated and uneasy when compared to the other two, and that sets Keith on edge. “We need to figure out how to deal with our new red friend, and then you guys have to get Blue back to the surface. So let’s please try to focus.”

‘Back to the surface’ the man had said, and Keith ponders it. The other lions must be travelling with accompaniment or a docking station; the lions simply aren’t big enough to host long-term space travel on their own. That means that whoever else they might be traveling with mut be on the planet, alongside whatever weapons they possess.

_ Does that include the Blue Paladin?  _ Keith’s traitorous mind wonders. There has been no mention of the Blue Paladin, let alone Lovag, but Keith can’t keep himself from pondering and making the grave mistake of hoping.

But still, Keith can’t and doesn’t trust these new paladins with unfamiliar voices and their unknown accents. They are wild carts in a game that Keith’s not willing to play, but is somehow stuck in anyway. It seems that Keith only has a few turns left and it doesn’t matter how fast Red is; any of the lions would catch her within seconds if Keith were to try to tow Blue away with them. This leaves Keith with far too few options for his liking.

“Maybe I could hack into his feed,” Pidge is suggesting by the time Keith makes up his mind, further cementing his theory that they are the Green Paladin.

“Or you could calm down and show some patience,” Keith responds, clearly and scathingly and still copying their odd accent. He pretends he doesn’t hear the phantom of Lovag’s voice teasing him about the irony of Keith lecturing someone else on patience.

Ignoring the loud one’s shocked gasp and Pidge’s declaration of “He lives!”, Keith waits for the older one’s reaction. He clearly has authority over the other two  _ and _ he acts as if he’s the rightful pilot of the Black Lion, making him the one Keith needs to appeal to.

Keith does not have to wait long.

“Thank you for getting back the Blue Lion for us.” It’s not a bad start, if a bit bland and pandering, but Keith hears a sliver of iron in his voice that he takes care not to dismiss. “I’m Shiro, the Black Paladin, and the other two are Hunk and Pidge. I’m guessing the Red Lion picked you to be her paladin?”

“Yeah.” Keith does not expand on his answer. A short but tense silence descends over the comm.

“Okay…” Shiro sounds more exasperated than unbalanced like Keith had intended, but he’s still determined to give as little as possible away. “So, what’s your name? And how exactly did you find us?”

“Keith. I had Red track your lions down.”

“Uh huh,” Shiro says, with enough hesitance that Keith suspects he didn’t know about that particular capability of the lions’. “Are you from Earth? Because Keith…that’s a pretty Earth-sounding name.”

“No.” Keith doesn’t let himself think about the father he never met and his mother’s insistence that ‘Keith’ was an honorable name from his father’s culture. Then, he shamelessly changes the topic. “Has the Blue Lion picked a paladin?”  _ Or has she kept the one she already had? _ his mind whispers.

The Black Paladin is undoubtedly thrown off track by Keith’s question, but he answers promptly nonetheless. “Yes, the Blue Lion has a paladin. He just…ran into a bit of trouble back on the planet’s surface.”

There is a story in his words, untold between the pauses lining his words and the hesitance coating his tone, and Keith narrows his eyes. “A bit of trouble?” he asks, and he nearly winces at how harsh and accusing he sounds.

It is the Green Paladin that answers. “Nyma, the girl in the ship, caught his eye since he’s a bit of an idiot when it comes to girls. Then she also caught his wrists and handcuffed them to a tree.”

They chuckle evilly as Keith looks down and sees that the residents of the captured shuttle are sitting around, glumly accepting of their failed thievery, but then his mind catches up with his ears, and Keith’s heart sinks.

According to Keith’s memories, it’s been only a couple of movements since he’s seen Lovag and told him to abandon his family for Keith. According to the stars and Red’s calendar, it’s actually been phoebs, forcing Keith to accept that his memory of and everything he knows about Lovag has probably begun to expire. However, there is one thing that Keith knows and will always hold to be true, and that is that Lovag may be a self-proclaimed womanizer (and manizer when someone caught his eye), but he’s also a ridiculously loyal, passionate, and heartfelt boyfriend.

It has never mattered how many castle personnel he wrapped into tight hugs or how many winks he gave out like candy; Keith has only ever had trust in Lovag, and a few months and a war does not change that, despite the feeling that they should.

That trust is screaming now, fighting against the information Pidge has given him. Keith tries to imagine Lovag, only a few phoebs after the two of them parted, being so smitten by a Vadazian girl that he gets tricked by her, and he fails, over and over and over again. It simply does not fit with the image of Lovag’s personality that Keith has put together over the deca-phoebs, piece by painstaking piece. Achingly, fists clenching on Red’s controls, Keith thinks over the idea that has been building in his chest since he up in Red’s cockpit, and it hurts.

Somehow, for some reason, Lovag has apparently been replaced as the Blue Paladin, and Keith has no idea where he is in this universe of war and division and strange accents. It is a terrifying thought, but it ignites a fire inside Keith that he has been sorely missing.

Blood roaring and pulsing pounding in his ears, Keith makes a decision and sets his jaw. Lovag is missing, off doing who knows what throughout the cosmos, and if he’s not present to protect his lion, then Keith will do it for him. And Keith will start by making sure that whatever little upstart has taken over as Blue Paladin is actually worthy of the honor.

“Alright,” he says aloud and is proud that his voice doesn’t crack. “Let’s get the ship back to the surface, and then you can convince me why I should trust you guys with the Blue Lion.” Keith does not wait for a reply, just navigates out of the line of two the lions had formed and starts toward the planet, ship hanging from Red’s claws. The other paladins have no choice but to aid him, even though their huffy comments over the comm make it clear that they are unhappy by the lack of trust Keith has in them.

Keith refuses to let it bother him. He’s been betrayed one too many times in the recent past.

With the combined force of three lions, the trip back to the surface is a quick and easy trip, the ship coming to rest on the dusty, red ground without a hitch. Once Keith is sure that the occupants aren’t planning on attempting an escape and the ground is stable beneath him, he positions Red directly in front of the hatch that must have been used to put the Blue Lion inside the ship. Eyes glinting and mouth on the verge of steaming, the Red Lion paints a menacing picture. The Green Lion, who remains a bit too close for Keith’s liking, immediately takes several steps back.

“Alright,” Keith says, and the thought of fighting someone in order to protect Blue has his fingers itching for his bayard. “Now convince me. Why should I let you keep the Blue Lion?”

The loud one mutters, “Oh boy, here we go,” under his breath. Shiro, who must be somewhere on the surface nearby, just sighs.

Pidge is the first to give an actual response, sassily and with fire that would leave Keith impressed if he were less uptight. “Uh, because her  _ paladin _ trusts us? And why do you get to decide who gets the Blue Lion anyway?”

Keith ignores the second part of their response. “A paladin only has to match the lion’s personality to be accepted. They don’t have to be good people. For all I know, you could be working with Zarkon. Now prove that you’re trustworthy or else you’ll never see me or the Blue Lion again.”

Pidge squaws indignantly, but Shiro hastily interjects. “Everyone just calm down!” he orders. “Keith, the other paladins and I are  _ not _ with Zarkon. In fact, we’re trying to reform Voltron so we can  _ fight _ Zarkon. We’re on your side.”

“You expect me to take your word as proof?”

“I expect you to trust us long enough for us to get you some proof!”

“Sorry,” Keith bites out. He doesn’t mean it. “But the last time I trusted someone, it ended up pretty badly. I’m not looking for a redo.”

“Keith–,” Shiro begins, and Keith is savagely satisfied by how exasperated he sounds. But he doesn’t get to hear the next plea that the Black Paladin is about to offer before Pidge loses their patience.

“ _ Ugh _ ,” they groan, loudly and with every intent of stopping the argument before it can continue to spiral into nothingness. “I figured the Red Lion was ridiculous and stubborn when she refused Allura, but I didn’t think it was possible for her paladin to be even  _ worse _ .”

All thoughts of which words will make Shiro angriest and which lion to attack first halt and Keith’s breath catches. He has travelled all over the universe, but he has only met one Allura, and it she’s here then…

“Wait,” Keith says. He cuts across whatever scolding Shiro is delivering to Pidge and catches the paladins’ attention with his significantly calmer tone. “...You guys are working with Princess Allura?”

There is silence, in which these strangers are surely processing what Keith has said and realizing that he has given them a key to his trust. Normally, he would hate that he has exposed weakness so easily to possible enemies, but the thought of Allura and the thought of any information that she might have sends logic and normal behavior rocketing out of the atmosphere. Lovag may not be the Blue Paladin for ragtag group of Earthlings, but if anyone would know where he is, it’s his sister.

Predictably, Shiro gains his bearings first and leaps at the chance Keith has relented. “Yes! Here, give me a second, and I’ll connect you to the channel for the castle.” There is a slight halt, the clicking of a few keys, then the tell-tale crackle of two comm frequencies merging into one.

“Princess,” Shiro says.  He sounds significantly calmer, and Keith suspects it comes from being able to give some of the leadership over to Allura instead of handling Keith’s hostility alone. “We got the Blue Lion and uh…met someone new as well.”

“That’s wonderful news, Shiro!” Allura chirps over the frequency, and her voice is a punch in the gut. The same accent and endless hope as Lovag, Allura is a piece of bread for a man desperately craving meet, and Keith’s throat closes up at the thought of his starvation.“And well, who is it?”

The paladins do not respond, allowing Keith to take the time to loosen his throat. His voice still rasps when he speaks, but she thinks that Allura won’t mind, that there’s not a chance she won’t recognize him regardless. He purposely doesn’t think about how the last time they saw each other; Keith had passed by her in a castle hall as he headed to try and convince her brother to betray and abandon his family. “...Hey, Princess,” Keith finally manages, infinitely quieter than he intends and infinitely louder than he wants. “It’s been a while.”

Allura gasps, a delicate and graceful sound that is nothing like Lovag’s dramatic inhales but reminds him of them anyway.“ _ Keith _ ?! Is that really you? It  _ can’t _ be!”

Keith swallows and closes his eyes. She’s shocked but not angry, and that’s honestly the best he could’ve hope for. “Yeah, it’s me.”

True to form, Allura does not waste time rolling in her shock or engaging in pleasantries over the connection. “I thought it impossible, but…very well. I…I think that this discussion would be better had in the castle,” she says. She sounds regal and poised, but after so many deca-phoebs, Keith hears the slight tremor in her voice. There is uncertainty and maybe even a bit of fear, but before Keith can even begin to register and understand what he should be feeling in response, Allura is speaking again, her no-nonsense _ I-am-a-born-and-bred-princess-and-you-will-obey-me _ voice firmly in place without a single falter to betray her. “Shiro, If you could, please restrain Rolo and Nyma in their ship. They’ve cost us enough trouble and someone just might stop to help them now that they actually have a broken ship. Hunk and Keith, if you would be so kind, please ferry the Blue Lion to her hangar. And Pidge, I would truly appreciate it if you would fetch the Blue Paladin, seeing as he’s a bit tied up at the moment.”

A vague chorus of “Affirmative” and “Sure thing!” and “Yes, princess” follows her orders, and with the weight in Keith’s gut telling him that things are about to go horribly wrong, the Red Paladin moves aside, letting the Yellow Lion step next to him at the Blue Lion’s side. Keith does not speak to Hunk, who he is assuming is the loud one, but he does ask for one, strong wave of reassurance from Red as the two approach an achingly familiar, shining castle with the Blue Lion in tow.

Red gives him an overwhelming wave of strength without hesitation.

\---

Lance is frozen when the Green Lion lands right next to the pond he and Nyma had been admiring when she had betrayed him. It’s a nice pond, full of memories and laughs, and Lance doubts he’ll ever be able to think of it now without grimacing.

Now, though, he doesn’t grimace or smile or speak because he’s frozen, thrust back into the stillness of time (or the lack of it), and he doubts he’ll ever thaw. That  _ voice _ , bursting through his helmet speakers in a shower of power and flame and a bad Earthling accent, had been the thing to freeze Lance. The news of Blue’s safety tweaks at his heart but does nothing to the ice in his ceings. The conversation that follows, built from words and phrases and threats traded between his new, strange teammates and  _ that voice _ acts only as a cold wind, sending Lance further into the frozen abyss that has become his world.

There are impossibilities that happen throughout the universe every day, and Lance has been privy to several. A king being denied in favor of a half-blooded infant? Impossible. A goofy prince replacing a gallant warrior as a defender of the universe? Impossible. Waking up ten thousand deca-phoebs into a war that you witnessed the beginning of? Impossible.

Hearing the voice of the man you love, gruff and hoarse but still whole and alive lifetimes after he should have perished, traitorous and kind heart motionless within his chest? The impossibility of it leaves Lance chilled to the bone, kept in place by the sensation of improbability and memory and time burrowing into itself. He is frozen in his shock, and Pidge’s arrival does nothing to break him from his icy, timeless haze.

A stinging slap and the shout of his fake name in his ear sends Lance hurtling back into the real world, and he stares in shock at his freed wrists, then the Green Lion, then the short Earthling who stands above him, arms crossed. They do not appear impressed.

“You know him, don’t you?” The question is almost enough to freeze time Lance once more, to lock him within his mind once more, but he fights the tightness of his chest and nods.

“Yeah,” he manages and watches as a small smirk spreads across Pidge’s face. They must be proud of figuring that out, Lance realizes, and he is struck with the odd feeling of having next to no one know anything about his life. After living as a popular and extremely visual prince, it is disarming on many levels not having the events of his life be common knowledge for those around him, and Lance is unsure how to feel about it.

“Knew it,” Pidge mutters as they pull Lance to his feet and begins tugging him towards the Green Lion. Lions are not equipped with guest seats, so once Pidge vaults into their chair and grasps the controls, Lance clings to the back of their seat, grip strong and tense.

“So, how is this guy still alive?” The Green Lion thrusters begin to propel them off of the planet’s surface, and with the sinking of his stomach comes the realization that the only way for Lance to possibly avoid this conversation is by leaping from the Lion’s main door, most likely to his death.

Instead of doing something rash that Allura will surely scold him for relentlessly, Lance just tightens his grip on the pilot’s chair even further, clears his throat to choke away his anxiety, and shrugs despite being out of Pidge’s line of sight. “Don’t know,” Lance says, and he means it i the sense that he doesn’t know how Keith is alive, why he’s even here, or how Lance himself feels about it.

Pidge hums, a quiet, curious sound, and steers Green a bit to the left. “You guys were paladins together, right?” Similar to Green, the conversation seems intent on going opposite of the right direction.

“Mmhmm,” Lance confirms, reluctantly honest and steadfastly suffering. “We trained together for a bit.”

“Huh, cool. So you guys were friends?”

“...Yes.”

“And how long did you date?”

Lost in his memories about electric mazes and gladiators, Lance doesn’t fully register the question until the response, automatic after months of nosey ambassadors and visiting guests, is halfway from his mouth. “A little over a deca– Hey wait a minute!”

Pidge cackles evilly, but calms once they glance over their shoulder and catch sight of Lance’s panicking face. “Oh, calm down. I’m guessing you have a reason for freaking out, right? Other than the obvious fact that he shouldn’t be alive. I…don’t know you that well yet, but you don’t seem like the kind of guy who would just freeze up like that. What happened between you two?”

“Zarkon happened,” Lance rasps, and he can still remember Keith’s intent gaze, his thumb rubbing the back of his hand, his pleading voice. “When the war broke out, everyone chose sides. Zarkon…he pretty much raised Keith, so naturally, he chose the Galra side. He tried to convince me to come with him and we had a big fight. Let me tell you, it was  _ not  _ pretty.” Lance’s attempt at a laugh falls flat, even to his ears.

“This guy, Keith, he’s with the Galra?!” Pidge’s voice cracks on the world ‘Galra’ and the Green Lion speeds up slightly. Lance curses himself for not explaining things better.

“Well yes, but it’s complicated! You don’t know him, and maybe the fact that he’s here now means he’s had a change of heart?” It almost sounds too good to be true, but Lance will never be able to completely give up his trust in Keith, no matter how many deca-phoebs and battleships seperate them.

Pidge clearly does not share his sentiment. “Uh huh. So we’re letting a guy who worked for Zarkon and sided with him in the war into the Castle of Lions while accompanied by his magical weaponized robot that is psychically connected to him?”

“Yup!” Lance, true to form, pops the ‘p’ and musters up a grin.

“Lovely,” they mumble in response, their eyes rolling around inside their head. “And how long before you ditch your Earthling disguise and tell him that you’re actually his long lost lover, back from the dead?”

“Um…is never an option?” asks Lance, and Pidge snorts like it’s a joke. The ice in his blood in now gone, replaced by the pounding of his heart and the jackhammering of his thoughts. Fear races through him, and Lance pears intently at his very weak, very human hand where it continues to grasp at the back of Pidge’s seat. They don’t know what Keith’s story is yet, and they don’t know if he’s reporting back to Zarkon remotely. It’s almost a no-brainer for Lance to keep his disguise in place, being safe rather than sorry even when it’s Keith holding any and all danger.

But if Keith turns out to be on their side? If he’s really against Zarkon and wanting to help them fight the Galra empire? Indecision runs rampant within Lance, snaking from his nose to his fingertips to his toes. Everything seems to be moving so fast now that Lance almost longs for the frozen timelessness of the cryopod, but then he berates himself for even thinking such a thought. The universe needs him, and Lance will use every weapon available to him, from Blue to his bayard to his newfound anonymity, to fight for it.

Bolstered by his determination and the reminder that it’s not just Lance’s relationship with Keith that has been torn to pieces by this war, Lance makes up his mind and locks his gaze onto the part of the castle that has appeared on the horizon line.

“Hey Pidge?” There must be something in his voice that he normally keeps hidden, something founded in war and sharpened by politics, because Pidge throws an alarmed and almost frightful glance over their shoulder at him.

“Yeah Lance?”

“Never probably isn’t an option, but seriously. Don’t tell Keith who I am and try to make sure the others know. I’ll tell him eventually, once we know he’s really on our side, but for now it’s just…”

“Complicated?”

Lance smiles at the ease in which the Green Paladin has grasped the situation and his feelings, despite their constant insistence that human emotions are clunky and difficult when compared to computer code. “Yes, exactly. It’s complicated.”

Content with his explanation and accepting of his unsurety, Pidge just nods and dives toward the Green Lion’s hangar. The Castle of Lions looms beside them, calling Lance home and reminding him of the potential danger and pain that now lies within it. Pidge lands Green with barely a jolt before turning in their seat and pinning him with a sharp gaze from behind their circular frames.

“Lance,” they say with the solemnity of a thousand year old ritual. “If you ever need someone to beat up your long lost ex-lover, I’m here for you. I’ll even get Hunk’s pacifist ass to help me.”

Lance finds himself oddly touched by such a violent offer coming from such a tiny and strange person who he has only known for a few movements. He chokes back a few tears and beams at them, for once not forcing the smile or make it bigger then it naturally wants to be. “Thanks, Pidge. That…that means a lot.” It means a surprising amount, Lance realizes as the two of them slowly make their way out of the Green Lion to greet their newest guest.

\---

Red’s hangar has not changed in ten thousand deca-phoebs, and for some reason, Keith can’t find it in himself to be surprised. He takes a few moments to collect his thoughts and run his hand over Red’s controls, but then he stalks out of Red, out of her hangar, and into the main bay where the rest of the ships residents are waiting. 

It is not hard to figure out which of the four people in the bay are Hunk and Shiro, and they are large but kind-looking and scarred but capable-looking respectively. When Keith walks through the door, they turn to look at him and  instantly develop identical expressions of shock, making him freeze in his tracks. Shiro drops into a stance that whispers of danger, and Hunk just backs up quickly, waving his right hand in the direction of the room’s other two occupants.

“Allura,” Hunk hisses as Shiro’s hand, which Keith carefully notes seems to be made with Galran tech, begins to steam and glow. “Allura, we have an  _ intruder _ !”

Keith dares not take his gaze away from Shiro because he is undoubtedly the greatest danger in the room, but then Allura orders everyone to stand down, and Keith cannot find it in himself to keep from looking at the princess. It doesn’t even matter to Keith in that moment that Allura’s order did little to relax Shiro’s battle ready stance.

The princess, adorned in the suit she would wear on the rare occasions when she had enough free time to exercise with Keith and Lovag and standing slightly behind Hunk and Shiro, looks just as Keith remembers her. Her hair has the same silky quality as Lovag’s and her limbs the same willowy grace, but where Lovag’s gaze had almost always been mischievous and playful, Allura’s is hard and cold.

“Keith,” the princess says, loudly and clearly and with a voice full of flint. “Should I be worried about you betraying us to Zarkon?”

Keith shifts uncomfortably and glances at Hunk and Shiro. Though calmer than when he first walked into the room, they are still tense and unsure, and Keith wonders just what Zarkon has done to create such strong hate for Galra in only a few short months. Coran, standing at Allura’s side and still sporting his ridiculous mustache, is the only one who appears unchanged and at ease, and Keith nods a small greeting to him before facing Allura once more. When he speaks, he does so in an imitation of the Earthling’s accent in an attempt to keep from giving them more reasons to notice his difference from them and association with the Galra.

“No. I betrayed Zarkon during the first battle of the war, and there’s nothing I want more than to see the Galra lose this fight.” Allura seems to take little comfort from his claim, but Keith doesn’t really cares. Instead, he asks after the person who has been on his mind, heart, and soul since Red first fished him from the ice. “Where’s Lovag? Why wasn’t he with Blue?”

Allura hesitates in her answer, casting an unsure glance towards a stoich Coran, and Keith steps forward. “Allura,” he warns, and his low voice causes Shiro’s hand to light up once more. Keith ignores it. “Where is Lovag?”

Fidgeting is something that Allura was trained out of at a young age, according to Lovag, but in this moment, her fingers glide along the fingers of her suit and twist around each other. The nervous energy is disconcerting to see, and the unsure expression on her face is even more so. “Well,” says the princess. “Lovag is–”

“Blue Paladin in the hizzle!”

Bay echoing with the announcement, said in that abrasive accent and accompanied by the arrival of two more Earthlings, Keith feels his heart stutter for a beat. He turns to the two Earthlings, dismisses them with a flick of his eyes, looks over their shoulders and towards the main entrance, then drags his gaze back towards the Earthling on the right. He is tall and likely the one who just spoke, making the small, androgynous one with circular pieces of glasses on their face, a mop of fluffy hair on their head, and the Green Paladin armor on their frame Pidge.

However, the other one, the tall one (obnoxiously so because he seems to be taller than Keith), has short, dark hair and long, skinny legs. He saunters past Hunk and Shiro and stops a short distance away from Allura and Keith, tilting his head. This close, Keith can see that his eyes are a shocking blue comparable to Allura’s and Lovag’s own, but despite this fact, his eyes are the least of Keith’s worries. Instead, it is the Earthling’s outfit that catches Keith’s attention and holds it.

When Keith was a child, he grew accustomed to seeing Blaytz around the training room, decked out in full armor and tossing around his bayard in the form of a net. Towards the end of Keith’s training, he grew accustomed to Lovag at his side, complaining about the complexity and needless pieces of full armor but still wearing it everyday as he guided and worked with Keith from one training exercise to the next. Now, when Keith has been a full blown paladin for deca-phoebs, he thinks that there is no way he can ever get used to seeing anyone other that Lovag dressed in the armor of the Blue Paladin.

“Who are you?” Keith rasps, staring directly at this newcomer dressed in clothing that doesn’t belong to him.

The Earthling looks at him then flicks his eyes away, and Keith feels anger boil in his gut at what must be an action of disregard. “Name’s Lance,” the man says. His voice is a bit tighter than it had been when he announced his arrival, but Keith chalks it up to fright. There are few who would be able to stand their ground in the face of a half-blooded Galra in the middle of a war against the same species, especially when that half-blood is obviously upset about something. “I’m the Blue Paladin.”

“No, you’re not,” Keith says and crosses his arms. The short, Green paladin whose name is most likely Pidge whistles in shock.

Lance, the ridiculous imposter appearing ruffled and upset over Keith’s words, begins to say something that will undoubtedly be barbed and harsh, but Allura cuts across him. Spouting an excuse about needing to check on Keith’s health and smiling a tight, unsure smile, she ushers everyone out of the bay and through the castle. She has Coran lead the way to the med bay and the princess positions herself directly between Lance and Keith. The two give her annoyed looks at her meddling while refusing to admit that such an intervention is necessary.

Eventually, the two Alteans and the four paladins find places to sit and stand around the med bay, and Coran begins checking on Keith’s basic readings after he hops up on one of the examination tables. While Keith is distracted with giving Coran a saliva sample, Allura seems to exchange a few hushed words with Lance, position him strategically next to Shiro with a purposeful glare, and turn back to Keith. The rest of the med bay waiting for her to take the lead, Allura begins her questioning.

Her inquiries are direct and well organized, and in no time, Keith has told the barest bones of his betraying Zarkon, being locked up, and being drifted. (He doesn’t notice how Pidge seems to perk up when he describes the events of his forced hibernation, a manic light gleaming in their eyes.) He tells them how he has been frozen since he was drifted and how Red saved him, and he has almost gotten to the point in his story when he leaves the ice planet in search for the other lions when Allura interrupts.

“How did you survive?” she wonders aloud, gaze intent enough that Keith must force himself not to shrink under it.

“I don’t know,” he responds as Coran peers at some fur from his ears using a microscope on a nearby counter. “I guess the ice kept me alive until Red managed to get to me.”

His answer does not seem to satisfy the princess because her eyebrows scrunch together and her nose wrinkles. “Yes, but for  _ that long. _ ”

“Allura…it was only a couple of months. Plus, Galra have advanced metabolism so…What?” A dark worry begins to build in Keith’s gut when he sees Allura’s stricken expression and the mix of shock and pity that the new paladins also seem to be exuding. Keith does his best to push it away. He tells himself that Allura is only overreacting about something, that he has nothing to worry about, but he still doesn’t fully believe it by the time she opens her mouth to respond.

“Keith…” Her voice is softer than Keith has ever heard it and seems to fade into the buzz of the medical machinery surrounding them. She pauses, uncertainty and pain dancing across her face.

“Why do I get the feeling that I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me?”

The lack of change in Allura’s expression does nothing to assuage Keith’s fears. He turns to look at Coran for reassurance, but the man refuses to meet his eyes. All of the paladins have their eyes glued to the floor, even Shiro. “Keith,” Allura finally says, speaking softly and sounding as if she’s talking to a trapped animal. “The last thing you remember is the battle outside of Altea, correct? The one that began the war?”

“Yeah, I got drifted right after it.” Keith watches as Allura closes her eyes, sighs, then opens them with a sad determination burning within them. Keith braces himself for whatever bomb she is about to drop.

“Right…Well, Coran and Lo–…Coran and I were put into pods directly after the battle and we only awoke a movement or two ago. However, when we checked the castle systems, we…we realized we had actually been asleep for ten thousand deca-phoebs.”

“Oh,” Keith says, finally, after a long, awkward silence hangs in the room. He takes a deep breath that cuts him open on the way down. “Yeah, that…that makes sense.”

The room does not respond, shocked stillness permeating the stale air, and the occupants only watch. They watch as the world is ripped out from underneath a boy’s feet by circumstance and torn to pieces by time. They watch as the boy takes another deep breath and starts to put his world, a new world, back together with only stubbornness and desperation. They watch as the boy continues on, not knowing that a crucial piece of his worlds, both new and old stands a few steps from him and and drowns in silence and self-hatred. They watch, but they say nothing.

“I noticed Red was keeping something from me,” Keith explains, stumbling and shocked. “There was something she wouldn’t tell me, but I didn’t think…I didn’t expect this.”

“No one expected this.” Allura’s voice is strong, as it always is in the face of hard decisions and harder futures. “And I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but if you’ll excuse us, I need to speak with you three, privately.”

She points at Shiro, Coran, and Lance and delicately inclines her head towards the hall. Pidge, Hunk and Keith watch silently as they progress out the door, leaving the medbay empty save for the whirring of the healing pods and the awkwardness of three strangers.

“So…” Hunk has the presence of a man who has never been good with silence, and he even winces when his voice crack explodes into the room. “You’re part Galra?”

Keith’s eyes flick in his direction, heavy and dark, then pointedly look down at his own purple hands, a single eyebrow raised. “Yeah. And if  _ you _ want to ask me something, then just get it over with.” He turns to face Pidge, quite certain that he will either hate or not understand whatever comes out of their mouth.

It doesn’t take long for Pidge to open their mouth, and Keith’s predictions turn out to be quite accurate.

“‘Sup,” they say, completely deadpan. “Name’s Nick Fury. And you’ve been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years.”

“Pidge!” Hunk whisper-yells. He looks vaguely terrified.

“But I’m not a captain?” Keith mumbles.

Pidge — not Nick Fury, Keith is sure of this — just rolls their eyes and turns to him once more. “You wouldn’t have happened to have a date planned before you got deep freezed, hmm?”

Keith, completely unprepared for the image of Lance that pops into his brain, swallows. He had been thinking about Lance when he went down, about his smile; he remembers it like it was just last movement, because to Keith, it  _ was _ just last movement. Keith opens his mouth to try and put such feelings into words, then closes it, and then does it again a few more times for good measure. Finally, he settles for a shrug and a “No…?”

Pidge huffs and mutters something that vaguely sounds like “lame” under their breath. Keith tries not to feel too offended by this short person who apparently thinks that he’s a captain instead of a paladin. He hopes that the discussion in the hall is going better than this.

\---

As far as Lance is concerned, the discussion in the hallways is not going better; it’s not even going  _ well _ . The moment he, Shiro, Coran, and Allura step into the hall, the latter two fix Lance with identical expectant stares that sends Lance’s skin crawling. Shiro, because he’s a kind person who Lance now appreciates much more, just leans on a nearby wall and lifts his eyebrows at the three Alteans.

“So, why does the original Red Paladin, who is a ten-thousand-year-old half-Galra soldier want to know so badly where Lance is?” he asks, blunt and straight to the point. Lance rescinds any favorable thoughts he has had about Shiro in the last five doboshes.

Coran takes it upon himself to explain the situation in the crudest and simplest way possible, and his declaration of, “They used to do the horizontal tango back in the day,” sends Lance spiraling into mortification. The man’s saucy wink does absolutely nothing to help the situation.

“Oh,” Shiro says, eyes wide. “Okay then. And why doesn’t Lance want Keith to know that he’s here?”

The three of them turn to look at the paladin in question, but he shrugs and continues his silence.

“Lance and Keith…didn’t depart on the best of terms,” Allura eventually explains. Lance glares at his sister in betrayal because he had told her and Coran that in  _ confidence _ after emerging from the cryopod, but she doesn’t even glance in his direction. “When the war began, Keith sided with Zarkon and he attempted to convince Lance to do the same.”

“You mean he told me to betray my father, my sister, and my people to side with a bloodthirsty warmonger,” Lance bursts, his temper flaring. “This isn’t some petty choice or lover’s spat. Keith betrayed Altea, betrayed Zarkon, betrayed the entire  _ universe _ . He doesn’t deserve to just be able to waltz back into the castle and get my full trust back automatically.” Sniffing sharply, Lance rubs the cuff of his sleeves along his dampening eyes.

“Oh Lance…” whispers Allura.

“Alright. So for the near future, you want to keep your true identity secret from Keith? At least until we know he’s one hundred percent trustworthy?” Lance nods determinedly at Shiro’s question, grateful for his willingness to work with Lance’s desires and feelings. "Do you also want me to see what I can do to keep the two of you separate?" 

“Yeah. I just…I can’t deal with him knowing. Not right now.” The other three occupants of the hallway seem to accept this, thought Allura does shake her head in disappointment at Lance’s choice. Lance ignores her.

“I’ll be sure to let Hunk and Pidge know in private,” Shiro says, and then he heads back into the medbay, Coran and Allura at his heels. Lance walks in last and steadfastly avoids looking at the table where Keith sits, even as he listens to Shiro tell Keith, “Welcome to the team, or I guess, back to it,” in that awkward, charming way that only Shiro can pull off. It is clear the man is pleased, likely happy that he can finally pilot his own lion now that the other four have been assembled.

Hunk and Pidge cheer, Coran and Shiro laugh warmly, Allura tightly mentions it’s good to have Keith back, and Lance…Lance stays silent and distant from it all.

\---

The world falls away from Keith when he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up it comes crashing right back down, the weight of his knowledge and responsibility and time missed slamming into him with the force of Red at top speed. He lays there, breathing and thinking, once more coming to term with his rebirth into this strange new age. After all, an age where Alteans are nearly extinct, Zarkon is not the Black Lion, and Lance is dead cannot be anything but strange in Keith’s mind. 

A sudden siren jolts Keith from his bed, sending him careening towards his paladin armor. He changes quickly and dashes out the door, not even pausing for the elevator but instead taking the hidden staircase he and Lance used to use for makeout sessions. The stairs fly beneath his feet, the Altean alarm bell shrieking in his ears, and Keith busts into the control room in what he thinks might just be record time. It is empty save for Coran and Allura, and they wave at him, signal him to be silent, then launch into the most ridiculous death scenario he has ever heard orated.

It takes a few doboshes (far too long, Keith thinks derisively) before the other paladins trickle in, and only Shiro is dressed in his armor. The Blue Paladin, Lance, is still half asleep and dressed in his pajamas, moaning about the pointlessness of drills when sleep is much more useful.

Allura sends him a particular savage glare, to which he responds, “Yesterday was a big day, so I’m  _ tired _ ,” and gestures rudely at Keith.

Keith scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“Well,” Allura eventually says, eyebrow twitching with pent up rage that Keith definitely relates to in that moment. “Excuses aside, the results of that drill were still absolutely abysmal. Now that we have all of our paladins, it’s time to begin training.”

A tight, dangerous grin overtakes Allura’s face, and while Shiro nods agreeably and the other paladins groan and whine, Keith smiles back the shark-like grin Lance taught him, teeth fully on display.

It takes two varga, three failed gladiator simulation, roughly a hundred zaps from the electric maze, and a very loud declaration from Lance that he  _ will not be doing the mind exercise under any circumstances, nope nope nope, not even if you paid him _ for Keith’s smile to fully shift into a dark, furious scowl. He had been looking forward to, excited even, about finally stretching his legs and training after flying across galaxies in Red, but the horrendous showing of his new teammates seems to suck all of the excitement out of the room. Finally, Keith backs away from the Level 0 gladiator the paladins are trying (and failing) to beat and makes his towards the observation level where Coran and Allura are standing.

“Allura,” murmurs Keith, walking to stand beside her and not missing the way she tenses at his voice. “Please tell me we have other options for paladins.”

Allura huffs angrily and her glare, which has been directed at Lance for the majority of training, strengthens. “Unfortunately, this is it,” she grits out. Lance swings what Keith recognizes as an Altean broadsword at the gladiator, misses, and gets thrown across the room.

Keith winces, partly out of sympathy and partly because he’s still not used to seeing the blue bayard as anything other than a type of gun. Any sympathy he has vanishes, though, when Lance pops right back up and yells, voice crackling through the speakers in the observation deck, “Where the heck is Keith?! He should be helping with this!”

Before Allura can stop him, Keith stalks forward and slams the microphone on. “Maybe I’m just waiting for some actual potential to show up before I join in.” The three other paladins, Shiro the only one positioned in anything relatively close to a combat position, turn offended looks towards Keith, and the gladiator quickly takes advantage of their distraction. Only a few ticks later, the paladins have been defeated, and Allura declares that it’s time to try the electric maze again.

“But Allura,” Hunk whines, rubbing the hand that he had held out in front of him his entire turn and consequently fried. “We’ve already done the maze!”

“Yes,” says Allura, her briskness the only thing that gives away how frustrated she is. “But we haven’t had Keith be the one going through it. Maybe once you see how a paladin completes it, you’ll be...inspired. Hunk, you’ll be the one guiding him.”

Keith, displeased that Hunk will be guiding him instead of Shiro but used to things not going away, simply returns to the training room’s main level. He passes the other paladins as they march up to the observation deck, where Hunk will direct him, and Keith silently berates himself for how the fur on his ears and head rises when Lance sends him a overly dramatic sneer. He needs to focus on the matter at hand, not how some stupid Earthling paladin seems intent on rattling him as much as possible in only one day.

Once Keith is positioned correctly and Hunk has apparently been reminded of his duties as a guide, a slight humming fills the training room, signaling the activation of maze.

“Alright,” Hunk stammers into the mic. “I’ll, you know, just tell you how many steps to take in a certain direction, then you can go, then stop, and then I’ll ju–”

“I’m going to start walking,” interrupts Keith. “Is my right clear?”

“Yes?”

“Good. Tell me the direction I’ll need to turn in when it becomes necessary, and I will.” Keith waits for Hunk to stutter out an affirmative then starts out in a brisk walk to the right. Familiarity courses through his veins and his ears sing with the buzz of the walls. It is unbelievably refreshing to be doing this once more, to relive the days when things were simple, just fight and train and dream of the day when he would join Voltron. The electric maze was never Keith’s favorite training technique, but when surrounded by strangers in a time that no longer makes sense, it is soothing and reassuring.

Several ticks into the exercise, Hunk says, “Left,” and Keith obeys, spinning sharply on his heel, smiling with the thought of navigating the maze without a hitch once more, and –

– and slams face force into an invisible wall of electricity.

“Oh god!” Hunk yells over the speakers as Keith takes a single step back (but no further to avoid the other wall) and rubs at his tender nose. “I’m so so so sorry I didn’t expect you to turn that fast are you okay?!”

“Fine,” Keith grunts. He lowers his hands and walks a few steps along where he assumes the hallway goes. “I’m at the turn now, right?” Hunk confirms, and Keith nods. “From now on, wait until I’m closer to the turn to give the direction. My reflexes are better than that.”

Without giving Hunk a chance to let him know that he understands, Keith sets off again, taking the left turn without a problem. This stretch lasts only a few ticks, and when Hunk says, “Right!” Keith obeys without hesitation. His trust is rewarded by shocks spreading from the side of his face to his shoulder and by another torrent of apologies falling from Hunk’s mouth.

The process continues six more times, leaving Keith increasingly irritated and in pain. By now, he has learned to take an extra step, and then follow Hunk’s instructions, but he still often clips the edge of the corner and just trips into another wall, worsening the shocks. Keith is nearly ready to just burst into a sprint, electricity be damned, and simply bump against the walls until he eventually makes it out of the maze, but he pushes the temptation down and keeps walking.

Once more, Hunk tells Keith to go right and he does, somehow avoiding the walls, but then there is an abrupt scuffing sound, the short shriek of feedback, and Lance’s voice, full of authority, ordering Keith to take a right once more.

Perhaps it is the surprise of hearing Lance sound so sure of himself and confident as opposed to the taunting that he has directed at Keith all day, or perhaps it is Keith’s desperation, but for some reason or other, Keith obeys Lance and is pleasantly surprised when the turn leaves him unaffected and unshocked. Not quite smiling but no longer grinning, Keith glances at the darkened observation deck window in surprise, then picks up his pace.

“Left,” Lance says soon after, cooly and without a doubt in his tone. Keith turns immediately and once more avoids any walls. His pace increases once more.

Three turns and one about face later, Keith is nearly sprinting, but Lance still manages to give directions with perfect timing. Not one does Keith get shocked and not once does Lance hesitate or stutter on a direction. After what surely must have been at least ten doboshes listening to and recovering from Hunk’s bumbling instructions, Keith makes it out of the maze in under two doboshes with Lance’s help. He hears the buzzing of the maze subside and laughs a bit, relishing in the feeling of a job well done.

The invisible maze had never been a favorite of Keith’s, but it as one he and Lovag had been a fan of, constantly messing around with it and testing to see how well they could get their instructions and movements to match up. This moment is all wrong, the abrasive Earthling accent replacing Lovag’s smooth Altean drawl and Lance replacing Lovag himself, but Keith still feels adrenaline and happiness surface in his body.

Watching as the other paladins burst from the stairway leading to the observation deck, rowdy and shouting praise for Keith’s quick reflexes, Keith raises a single eyebrow at Lance. The Earthling, hands in the pockets of a ridiculously big jacket that looks like it could fit Hunk and smug grin stretching underneath twinkling eyes, winks back. Keith decides that maybe he’s just bad at getting a read on Blue Paladins during first meetings; after all, Lovag had yelled at Keith for spilling nunvill on them when they first met, igniting his temper quickly, but they had ended up as something closer and more precious than mere friends. Perhaps, Keith contemplates, the new Blue Paladin isn’t as bad as he initially thought.

Then Lance makes a comment about how Keith is lucky he was able to rely on Lance’s innate leadership abilities, or else he’d have never made it out of the maze with his two left feet, and Keith decides no, his initial assumptions about his new teammate were quite accurate.

\---

Despite Lance’s optimism when nervously asked about the mission by Hunk a few before varga before the ship reaches its destination, the Balmera is not a great team bonding experience nor a cakewalk; in fact it more closely resembles a lesson in pain, suffering, and one pitfall after the other.

At one point, Lance has to dramatically yet vaguely remind Shiro of his promise to keep the Blue and Red Paladins apart for the time being, but it is worth the affronted stare that Keith gives him in response. Nevertheless, with one crisis averted, ten more seem to pile up once the five paladins dart off in separate directions on their speeders.

If feels like mere seconds between landing on the Balmera and coming face-to-face with the robeast, but when fear and necessity begins to thrum at the paladins’ minds and to remind them that they have access to a weapon, the universe’s most powerful, time slows to a crawl.

Lance knows what needs to happen. The very air calls for Voltron’s presence, but it still takes eons for Shiro to voice the fact.

“This isn’t working,” he says, and Lance silently agrees, grip on Blue’s controls tightening. “We have to try to form Voltron.”

The words have barely been said before the lions fly into the formation that Allura has lectured them on relentlessly, but to Lance, it takes years. As the lions’ quintessence expands and begins to connect, Lance dives into the bond and pushes past the feelings of unsurety and nausea. He grips onto the sea of determination that streams from the Black Lion, acknowledging Shiro’s presence and offering him a bridge back. Then, Lance reaches for the person who he fully trusts to form Voltron properly.

Keith’s irritation with the robeast is carefully tempered and his twinges of fear are tightly restrained and hidden, and as soon as Lance brushes against them in the bond, he throws himself forward wholeheartedly. The time it takes for Keith to push back and bond with Lance is almost nonexistent, and their cohesion is instantly seamless.

The other paladins must feel Keith and Lance tether themselves to each other, because they pile into the bond shortly after. Lance is sure that they do it shockingly quickly for their first time. But his mind still chants  _ too slow, too slow, too slow _ . But then, the lions change and the paladins merge, and just as Voltron’s joints click into place, Lance’s sense of time does, too.

After 10,000 years, the Defender of the Universe has finally returned, but all too soon into the battle, it is clear that Voltron alone is not enough. Hopelessness begins to collect at the edges of the bond, but the paladins stubbornly force it away.

Then, the impossible, or at least the impossible when maiden voyages of mystical space robots are concerned, happens, and everything changes.

Lance feels a sensation brush at his mind, a tingle spark into his fingers and flow up his arms, and he grins savagely. He knows that the other paladins won’t feel it, that it is only due to experience that he notices the suspenseful atmosphere that builds inside his lion and bond, but he knows at least Keith will notice the change and take advantage of it.

Energy funnels through the bond and Voltron jerks, the roar of the lions bouncing inside Lance’s head. Sounds of surprise come through the comm, but Lance ignores them in favor of staring at Blue’s screen. A large sword, nearly as tall as Voltron himself and sharpened to perfection, rests in the mouth of the Red Lion. The curving lines of the blade and sharpened ends of the hilt scream Keith; Lance’s grin grows teeth at such a familiar sight.

“Um, what the quiznak is  _ that _ ?” Pidge exclaims. Lance chuckles as Shiro half-heartedly scolds them for their language.

“It’s Voltron’s sword.” Keith’s expectation, obvious though it may be, is lined with smugness. Lance imagines that he wears a smirk remarkably similar to Lance’s own, then pushes that train of thought away.

The paladins learn quickly, coming together to move in time, and the teamwork Keith and Pidge fall into as they swing the sword in deadly, measured strokes is impressive. Shiro, especially, blows Lance away, and it doesn’t seem to matter that he man has spent the last year as a prisoner of that he is constantly being betrayed by his own mind and his own inferior, non-Galra body. Shiro’s order are self-assured and confident, and Lance follows his lead with a trust and an ease that he never quite felt while working under Zarkon.

It takes time, and it takes effort, and it takes a series of small miracles, but somehow, between the paladin’s determination and the Balmera’s quiet style fo revenge they come out of it all successful.

(There is a moment, when Lance feels of the quintessence of the Balmera shift under his lion’s paws and sees Allura collapse, that he thinks he’s back in the cryopod because time has ceased to exist and Lance’s heart has stopped in his chest. He wishes, in that moment, that he had been the firstborn or that he had been the one forced to take the mind-numbing classes about age-old Altean traditions. Lance wishes he could have been the one to perform the ritual, but once Coran reassures everyone over the comm that  _ the princess is okay, she just needs rest _ , his chest settles and his mind resets, and Lance remembers he has a different role to play.)

Spirits are high after the robeast is defeated once and for all. Lance can feel the ecstasy pulsing through his lion and into him, and he exits Blue with a skip in his step, smiling at his excited teammates.

Hunk’s hands seem to be shaking, but he wraps Pidge in a bear hug regardless, and they actually let it happen. Shiro stands serenely off to the side, looking shocked but so, so proud as his gaze brushes over the other two Earthlings. Keith takes a bit longer to walk out of his lion, but Lance chalks that up to his unfamiliarity with the paladins. After all, Lance has had nearly two phoebs to adjust to his loud new teammates. Keith has barely had two quintants. But then, Keith’s boots hit the newly-revived ground of the Balmera and he removes his helmet, and Lance’s heart stutters.

He had forgotten, in his betrayal and his distance and his grief, the exact layout of Keith’s face when victory is etched upon it and the satisfied line of his shoulders after flying a while in Red and knowing beyond a doubt that they belong to each other. Lance had forgotten Keith’s unfair and natural beauty, his attentive ears and sharp jawline and dark eyes that could pick a person’s soul apart. It takes one glance to remind Lance of all that, and unbidden, the knot that Lance hadn’t realized had been resting in his chest loosens and his anger falls away.

Keith is familiar in a time when very little is, and Lance finds he still trusts the quiet triumph that Keith drapes himself in. Lance and Keith have always been there, neck and neck in ambition, side by side in battle, and Lance knows the Red Paladin like he knows the layout of his own markings.

It takes one glance to remind Lance of everything he knows about Keith, and it takes one second more for Lance to realize that he trusts Keith’s pride at having bested Zarkon’s beast. The slight smile that tugs at his lips and shows off a single fang is enough to convince Lance, and with a laugh and the belief that somehow everything will be okay and Voltron will eventually prevail, Lance throws himself into Hunk’s and Pidge’s hug.

His smile doesn’t fade for the rest of the quintant.

\---

Nearly a movement after the Balmera mission, Keith makes his way to the practice deck several varga before breakfast. He has every intention of sparring against the gladiator and honing some of his over the head maneuvers, but those intentions flee his head when he finds Hunk, Lance, and Pidge spread out on three thin mats, contorting their bodies into various states of disarray.

“Um, what are you doing?” The question is valid, of course, but Keith still regrets asking it when Lance is the first to answer.

“It’s called yogi, Keith. It’s used on Earth to help with relaxation and focus.” The word ‘Earth’ feels like a dagger, used to remind Keith that he is the only paladin from another planet, and that even with Allura’s and Coran’s presence, he is still an outsider. The thought sits heavily in Keith’s gut, and he watches as the Blue Paladin’s head lifts from where it had been resting on his mat. Lance’s legs are bent in the same direction but spread, and his torso is stomach-down on the mat. The entire position looks uncomfortable, and the sight of Lance’s lower half displaying such limberness while clothed in nothing but thin black cloth is what makes Keith’s ears flick in embarrassment. The Galra are far from promiscuous, and he had never quite grown used to the fearless way Alteans and other species barred their bodies to the public.

A second goes by before Pidge’s cackles fill the air, and Keith turns to look at the room’s other two occupants. Hunk, also wearing what are apparently called ‘leggings’ on Earth, has positioned his body in the same manner as Lance, though his legs don’t seem to stretch as far. Pidge has one leg folded underneath their torso with the other extended straight backwards, and Keith watches as they continue to giggle into their forearms.

Hunk just sighs and turns to give Keith a smile that looks more like a grimace. “Y-yeah, we’re doing some… _ yogi _ . Do you want to join us, Keith? It makes you more calm and flexible.” As he says this, Lance stretches out his legs in opposite directions, looking directly into Keith’s eyes. Keith fights the blush that he feels winding up his neck, and steadfastly refuses to notice how Lance is now doing a split with his stomach still resting on the ground.

“N-no thanks, Hunk,” Keith says around his dry tongue and feelings of discomfort and guilt. “I think I’m going to go find Shiro.”

He flees from the practice deck, ignoring Pidge’s renewed laughter and Lance’s scoff that seems to fall flat in the open expanse of the hallway.

\---

Lance has decided, in the ten thousand deca-phoebs and change since his birth, that if a horrific incident ever befalls Allura and puts Lance as the heir for the throne, his first action upon being crowned would be to enact a royal decree that the universe needs to start giving face masks the attention they deserve, and  _ fast _ . There are no words for the absolute loveliness of applying a cool face mask after a hard workout, and Lance has spent many a varga trying to figure out what exactly makes them so heavenly. His theories have ranged from the powerful and refreshing scents to the coolness of them on hot, oily skin to Alteans having an innate desire for something thick and creamy to cover their faces. (Lance had shared that particular theory with Keith, and all he had gotten for his trouble was a disbelieving stare and a gentle slap upside the head.)

Nevertheless, after a particularly grueling training session against the gladiator where Lance had attempted and generally failed to wield his new Altean broadsword as well as his father, Lance retreats to his room, breaks out one of his sea breeze face masks, and settles down to watch some old Altean dramas Pidge had dug up from the castle’s archives.

The main character has just discovered her best friend is actually her long lost lover in disguise (where do they come up with this stuff?) when there’s a knock on Lance’s door. The Altean sits up, feels along his ears to make sure the tips are still rounded, and signals for the room to allow access to his visitor. The door slides open, and somehow, Lance finds himself utterly unsurprised to see Keith standing awkwardly in the hall.

“Wassup Keith,” Lance says in greeting, layering the Earthling accent on thick. He pauses the drama as Keith hesitantly steps into his room, and notices that the main character and her best friend are now frozen in a passionate make out session on screen. Awkward.

Keith says nothing, just nods in greeting, and continues to stand their, radiating unsurety and wringing his hands. Because Lance is a nice person and has long grown used to Keith’s shy and awkward personality, he stands from his bed and walks to stand in front of him. Keith tenses and glances up at Lance, but still says nothing.

“Um, Keith? Buddy?  _ Mi amor _ ?” (Pidge had taught him that one, and while Lance doesn’t know what it means, it’s clear Keith doesn’t either.) “You’re kinda cutting into my time with these awful dramas Pidge hooked me up with, and Baratna and Szereta just had their tearful reunion, so if you don’t actually need anything...”

“Your sword work sucks,” Keith blurts out, and Lance’s jaw drops.

“Excuse me?!”

“You stance is off and you don’t wield it properly, but I can–“

“You come into  _ my _ house, interrupt  _ my _ trashy Altean dramas–”

“This isn’t a house, it’s a castle, and it doesn’t belong to–”

“And then you have the  _ audacity _ to imply that my sword work sucks–”

“Because it  _ does _ –”

“Begone! This is my relaxation time–”

“I’m just trying to offer–”

“You will  _ not _ barge into my peace and quiet and–”

“ _ Just train with me _ !”

Lance’s teasing expression drops, and he feels his face mask, now mostly dry, crack as his eyes widen and his mouth goes slack. Lance is intimately aware with all of Keith’s parts, whether it be the good or the bad or the fiercely idiotic, but he hadn’t expected Keith to bare this particular part of him to Lance, a relative stranger who either avoids Keith or teases him in an attempt to get him out of his own head. Something warm grows in Lance’s chance and he fights the urge to smile and crack his face mask further.

“You want me to train with you?” he whispers, losing the battle against his smile quite spectacularly.

Keith shrugs and crosses his arms, surly as ever. “You have some potential,” he admits. “If you just get some guidance and put in some extra practice, you could actually be decent.”

Despite the thinly veiled insult, Lance chuckles. “Wow, that’s…Thanks, Keith. I wasn’t expecting this from you. I thought you kind of hated me.” It had been hard, the first time Lance had thought about the possibility of Keith coming to hate Lance’s persona, but over time he had grown used to it, and now he has essentially accepted that hatred as fact.

Keith’s eyebrows raise in surprise and he drops his arms to his side. “I don’t hate you,” he says, earnestly and clearly without his brain to mouth filter in effect. “I’m just upset that you’re not the old Blue Paladin.”

Both boys freeze, Keith in slowly surfacing mortification and Lance in instant shock. Keith begins to back away, towards the door and this awkward situation, but Lance darts forward and grabs Keith’s wrist. When the Red Paladin stills and doesn’t pull away, Lance takes a step closer.

“The old Blue Paladin? You mean Allura’s brother.” Keith nods wordlessly, and seems to age several deca-phoebs before Lance’s eyes. “You guys were close?”

Keith stares straight into Lance’s eyes, expression blank but doing nothing to keep the emotion from screaming out into the hair. “I loved him,” he says flatly, but with a softness usually reserved for sleepovers and midnight whisperings back before the war. “I still do. He was my chosen.”

For a moment, Lance considers spilling everything. He considers laying the truth bare in his tiny paladin room, the one he had claimed in an effort to avoid the tainted atmosphere of his old room where he and Keith had fallen in love over and over again. He considers cleaning off his face mask, dropping the disguise, and telling Keith every truth he has ever kept secret in his true, Altean accent, the abrasiveness of his Earth voice cast to the side. Lance considers doing all of this, but it is Lovag that keeps his lips from moving.

It has been several movements since Keith rescued Blue and hurtled back into Lance’s life in a shower of apologies, complaints, and heroic actions, and there is little doubt in Lance’s mind that Keith has truly left Zarkon behind. Logically, there is no reason to continue concealing the truth from him, and while Lance has always been a logical person on the battlefield, organizing and directing strategies at the drop of a hat, in day to day life, when a blaster is not needing, Lance is ruled by his emotions. 

When he imagines the expression on Keith’s face when he realizes the truth and visualizes forcing the words  _ I’m sorry, it’s me, it’s all been a lie _ from his mouth, Lance’s emotions seize up and fight against such thoughts. Fear and apprehension take control of Lance in that moment, and with Keith watching him with a look that says he has lost everything and he cannot handle another groundbreaking discovery, Lance finds himself unable to speak the truth.

He imagines himself telling Keith, sitting them both down on his bed and coming clean, but instead, what comes out of Lance’s mouth is, “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, and I’m sorry I’m not him, but I would still like to train with you. Does tomorrow before breakfast work?”

Keith nods once and shakes Lance’s hand from his wrist, leaving Lance in his room, numb, alone except for Baratna and Szereta, and drowning in self-hatred that still isn’t strong enough to make Lance chase after Keith and come clean.

\---

The heels of Keith’s feet bounce against Red’s nose as he swings them from his perch on her snout. It is an old position, made into routine by sleepless nights and attempts at strengthening the bond between them when he was younger. Red’s hangar is nearly always quiet, and Keith often uses it as a place to think, comforted by the hum of her quintessence and the safety he feels, perched atop her head and a few lengths off the ground.

Shiro’s quiet entrance does not disrupt Keith’s comfort, but it does add a new energy to the room, making Red’s thoughts more active and Keith’s feet bounce faster. The Black Paladin waves cheerily at Keith, and when Keith waves back, proceeds to climb up to Red’s snout with little to no problem. He settles easily next to Keith and turns his head, seeming to study the profile of Keith’s face against the white of the hangar walls.

“What,” Keith intones flatly. He had been pondering over how best to challenge Lance further during training; the Blue Paladin had been improving in leaps and bounds since they started meeting up in the mornings to fight the gladiator.

“Nothing,” Shiro says, the nonchalantness so obviously an act that it leaves an odd taste in Keith’s mouth. He likes Shiro, likes his maturity and confidence, and he may not be as close to him as he had thought himself to be to the old Black Paladin, but he still enjoys his presence quite a bit. Keith especially enjoys the honesty that Shiro seems to gift him with, and this blatant faulseness is unwelcome in their relationship.

“You wouldn’t search me out to talk to me in Red’s hangar if it were nothing,” Keith remarks mildly. His words have an undercurrent of a bite to them, and he looks at Shiro out of the corner of his, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

Shiro sighs and reclines back on his hands, apparently giving up his painfully obvious facade. “It’s about you and Lance,” he begins, and Keith is suddenly extremely certain he doesn’t like where this is going. His bouncing feet slow to a stop.

Shiro notices Keith’s instant tenseness and raises his shoulders in subtle subjugation. “It’s nothing bad,” he insists and Keith barely resists the urge to scoff. “I’ve just noticed that you guys have been arguing less. It’s great that you’ve started to get along.”

Uncomfortable with Shiro’s casual way of discussing emotions, Keith fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “We’ve just been training together some. I’ve been helping him wield his bayard.”

Shiro hums. “It’s really nice of you to help him like that.”

“He wasn’t living up to his full potential, and that was pulling team down.”

“You know, it was lot easier to believe the lone wolf act before I formed Voltron with you,” Shiro chuckles. Keith purses his lips in displeasure, then smooths out his expression when he remembers how Lance had teased him about his pouting just earlier that morning.

“I’m not a lone wolf,” he mumbles, rubbings his hand along Red’s bright paint job. He doesn’t need the skeptical sensation that Red sends over their bond to know how false the statement sounds.

Shiro also does not seem wholly convinced by Keith’s claim. “You may not be a lone wolf, but from what I can tell, you do try to keep people at a distance. You’ve been doing it with the entire team, especially Lance.”

“His energy can be exhausting sometimes,” Keith hedges, when all he can think is  _ his energy reminds me of Lovag, their quintessence is the same and so are their personalities and I don’t know how to deal with it. _

“I think,” Shiro says, staring up at the hangar ceiling in thought. “That you’re really just afraid of how Lance’s so-called energy, his personality, might affect you if you let it get too close.” He turns and looks Keith dead in the eyes and seems to understand that he has hit the problem on the head. “Just talk to him, Keith.”

Shiro’s logic, cool-headed and reassuring, and his unshakable confidence ground Keith in the here and now, and it is with a start that Keith realizes that he actually considers Shiro a friend. The warmth of that knowledge filling him up, Keith nods agreeably and vows to do it soon.

\---

Keith does not talk to Lance soon. Instead, he invades a space hub, infiltrates a spaceship with a princess who might’ve been his sister-in-law in another world, is forced to abandon her, and ends up in an identity-revealing battle against the emperor of the known universe during a suicide mission to save said princess. It is only when Keith’s lion hurtles from the sabotaged wormhole, the remnants of Zarkon’s threats and accusations of betrayal ringing in his ears, that Keith realizes that he never did talk to Lance, and that he’ll probably regret it when he inevitably ends up frozen for another ten thousand deca-phoebs, because that’s just how Keith’s life works.

\---

The wormhole drops the Blue Lion far above a shining blue expanse of a sea, and though most of Lance’s energy is used to cling to the edges of his seat, he thinks he sees a flicker of Red splash into the water several ticks before Blue also makes contact with the surf. Quite literally made for this environment, Blue instantly activates the counter measures to keep the water out and reroutes power to the comm system. She knows Lance’s intentions, just as he knows her endless capabilities when surrounded by her element.

It takes Lance nearly four doboshes to find the correct frequency and properly connect it due to interference with the water, and when he finally picks up the weak signal of Keith’s helmet and projects the sound feed, he initially thinks that he has done something wrong. Outside of the Blue Lion, water flows over her frame, creating a soothing symphony of ebbing and flowing. A similar sound plays over the speakers, but it is much louder and holds a whisper of danger, and when Lance calls out Keith’s name, there is no response. 

Hoping the Blue Lion’s underwater adaptation is simply preventing some of the signal from coming through, Lance asks Blue to let him out of the cockpit. She does so reluctantly once Lance has secured his armor and slid his full helmet over his head, altering the exit to keep water from entering the interior of her head. 

However, even outside, with nothing but the ocean to interrupt any signal from the Red Paladin’s helmet, there is still only the sound of rushing water. An idea starts to form in Lance’s head, rooted in the knowledge that Blue has special procedures for being underwater, but water is also Blue’s element. Fire is the Red Lion’s element, and not once had Keith ever told Lance about a mission where he and his Lion had gone underwater. 

It is the murmur of Blue’s worry for Red in Lance’s mind that solidifies the idea, and with what Lance is now sure is the sound of Red’s cockpit being flooded filling his ears, Lance comes to the realization that Keith hasn’t responded, is trapped in a metal lion that is filling with seawater, and that Galra are notoriously bad swimmers. 

Lance doesn’t really stop to think about it, but then, he doesn’t have to. His skin is already shifting, bones elongating and fusing and muscles reorganizing themselves; his armor effortlessly changes to match his new form. The change scratches an itch that Lance had not even realized was there, stretching the parts of his biology that had gone unused for so many movements.

Finally, Lance realizes just how limiting his Earthling form is, and with two swipes of his newly formed tail, he is darting through the water towards the vague outline of Red in the distance. Nearly unbidden, his ears return to their beloved points and his eyes are strengthened by the glow of his markings. Lance has no time to ponder his appearance, so he does not realize that his hair has taken hints from his other features, returning to its natural, shocking white.

It takes far too long, even with the tail, to make it to Red. Convincing the injured lion to open her maw takes longer. Eventually, armed with his overpowering desperation and the indisputable argument that Keith needs his help, Lance convinces the rapidly fading Red to crack her mouth open, just wide enough for Lance to shimmy through and swim into the cockpit, which is now completely underwater.

Keith is a limp form drifting in the water towards the back of the cockpit. His helmet, cracked and useless, rests towards the front, and when Lance swims directly to Keith’s side, the Red Paladin does not move save for his hair waving about in the disturbed water. His face, pale and shining blue in the shifting atmosphere, habitats closed eyes and an open mouth. As Lance wraps his arms under Keith’s shoulders, he looks for air bubbles trailing from his open lips but sees none. Normally, Lance would also be worried about Red and her recovery, but as he pulls Keith from the wreckage and continues to see no signs of air bubbles or movement, the lion is the farthest thing from his mind.

Keith’s limp body is nothing but deadweight, and for what must surely be the millionth time, Lance thanks ever deity from every culture his tutors make him study that Keith takes after his non-Galra lineage in stature.

The trip to the surface goes by quickly, but Lance is unsure how long Keith has been unconscious, so he pumps his tail as fast as it can go and instantly shifts into his Altean form when they hit the shoreline of an island that could easily be described as a glorified sandbar.

Lance doesn’t slow, not wasting any time in dragging Keith from the water and depositing him on dry land. Ears sodden and slicked down, Keith paints a rather pitiful picture, but his stillness is what pushes Lance’s body into further action, instincts taking over.

Lance turns Keith onto his back and straightens his head, and in his mind’s eye, he sees one of the teachers at the paladin training school lecturing him, reminding him that his teammates aren’t Altean and therefore very susceptible  to drowning.

Lance places Keith’s arms at his side and removes the breastplate from his paladin armor, and he remembers scoffing as they had repurposed and rebuilt a sparring gladiator to have a hole for a mouth and a softer, movable breast plate.

Lance tilts Keith’s chin back, pinches his nose, and breaths into his open mouth, past his teeth and tongue and throat and into his lungs as he aches for the way Keith had nudged him and told him to  _ stop complaining, this might come in handy someday _ .

Lance interlocks his fingers and presses, gently but with enough strength that he hears a few ribs creak and break, and he pretends that he’s back in the training room, gladiator under him and Keith behind him as he waits for his turn.

Lance repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and wishes that the memory in his head would repeat until nothing else exists except him and Keith, and their high score on the invisible maze, and their sweat that coated the training room after taking down the gladiator together, and their laughter that filtered through the changing rooms whenever they were feeling flirty and fun enough to shower in the same stall. Lance repeats and breathes and presses and does everything he can think of to take everything from his own body and force it into Keith’s.

Lance is so lost in the moment and so desperately drowning in memories that it takes him a few seconds to realize that Keith’s chest has started to move underneath his hands. He pauses, waiting with his weight leaning towards Keith, and lets tears fall freely when Keith’s chest moves again – it is undeniably a breath. A breath of air, of hope, of  _ life _ – and his eyelids flutter open.

“Quiznak, Keith,” Lance murmurs, and he reaches up to remove his helmet because his tears are fogging up the glass.

Lance only recognizes his mistake when Keith, a nearly dead man who is miraculously and wondrously alive, pales. He looks, for all intents and purposes, like he has simultaneously gone to heaven and seen a dead man, and Lance wonders, sinking stomach accompanying the ache of his relief, how long it will take to convince Keith that he didn’t drown and is still in the land of the living.

“Lovag…am I dead?”

Too long, Lance decides, happily, and with dread resting in his gut. Far too long.

\---

It can be easily said that the Red Lion is the most reckless and unpredictable of the Voltron lions. As her paladin, Keith knows that this is true and knows that the same can be said for him. That’s why, when the shock settles down and the belief settles in, he is not surprised to see hope etched into the line’s of Lance’s –  _ Lovag’s _ – lying, Altean face. The poor guy has no idea what to expect next, and Keith feels a vengeful satisfaction when he realizes that in this moment, Lance is just like everybody else and is unable to predict Keith’s next move.

Keith, though reckless and unpredictable, also knows how to make split second decisions. And that is exactly what Keith does while he sits on a glorified sandbar with his lying but miraculously alive ex-boyfriend in front of him. He makes several split second decisions, and forces them together into a semi-cohesive plan. And then?

Keith executes the plan.

Step One: Fling Lance into the water.

(It goes well. Lance, clearly thrown off his rhythm, lacks all of his usual grace as he flops into the water. The lack of time for preparation leaves him unable to form gills in time, and Keith grins awfully at the mouthful of water that Lance chokes on.)

Step Two: Save the drowning idiot and drag him back onto the stupid sandbar.

(It goes slightly less well, Keith’s limbs weighed down by exhaustion and the water, but it still doesn’t take him too long to wade into the waves, grab Lance by the neck of his armor, and drag him, spluttering and clearly pissed, back onto the sand. In fact, it happens so quickly that Lance doesn’t even have time to grow a tail, which Keith congratulates himself on once he drops Lance and sits himself down beside him.)

Step Three: Take a deep breath and center himself.

(Admittedly, when Keith had made that decisions, there had been a voice scarily similar to Shiro’s shouting, “Patience yields focus!” inside his head. Still, despite the oddness of taking a minute to organize his thoughts, Keith takes deep breaths and does so as Lance slowly catches his breath at his side.)

Step Four, and the most difficult one of all: Talk.

(Keith opens his mouth, then closes it, and then goes back to Step Three indefinitely.)

“So…” Lance says, once his lungs have stopped trying to expel themselves from his body. Keith feels gratefulness nudge against his fury and aggressively ignores the way that Lance is always the one to talk first, to get Keith out of his thick, introvert shell. “How mad are you? On like a scale from Hunk to Allura after we sabotaged all of her hair ornaments right before that diplomatic feast.”

“Zarkon,” Keith says flatly, crossing his arms and arms and looking out over the expanse of water before him.

“O-oh.”

“Did you expect something different?” Keith seethes. His anger is building in the face of Lance’s unapologetic nonchalance. Left unchecked, it will soon boil over and combust.

“I don’t know,” Lance admits quietly. “I knew you’d be mad, but I kinda expected you at least understand my reasoning a little bi–”

“I  _ mourned _ you, Lance,” Keith yells, spinning you glare at the Altean beside him. “All this time, I thought you were  _ dead _ ! For the past few phoebs, I’ve been trying to live with myself, thinking that the last time I saw you, we fought because I tried to convince you to betray you family and planet!”

“Exactly!” Lance bursts, unable to hold his tongue or his good humor any longer. The hurt of the past few phoebs, of the last ten thousand deca-phoebs rears its ugly head and leaves Lance choking on his pain, his fear, and his burning anger. “The last time I saw you, you were on your way to join  _ Zarkon _ , and you expect me to just trust you after that?!”

“I never said I wanted you trust!” Keith’s voice cracks and the back of his eyes grow hot. “But maybe it would have been nice to have your  _ honesty _ ! You’ve been alive all this time, right next to me, and it would have been  _ great _ to know that!

“ _ Not _ so we could just go back to how things were before,” Keith protests when he sees Lance’s indignation rise. “But just so I…so I could know. And maybe we could have talked about things and figure stuff out. Together.” Keith loses the battle of keeping his tears at bay and swipes his eyes with a gloved hand. With his blurred vision, he sees Lance’s eyebrows furrow.

“I get what you mean,” the Blue Paladin says softly, his body deflating as his anger drains away. “And I get why you’re angry. I do! But when you first showed up, everything was still so…so fresh. We didn’t know why you weren’t siding with Zarkon, and we weren’t sure, at the beginning, if we could trust you.”

“And once you realized that you  _ could _ trust me?” Keith asks, bite evident in his words.

“I don’t know.” Lance’s head hangs low, exhausted form the battle against Zarkon, the underwater rescue, and now this argument. “Keeping the secret just kinda became habit, and I was always nervous about how you would react.”

“Oh yeah,” Keith drawls, sarcasm dripping from his mouth. “‘Cause keeping it a secret definitely kept me from reacting badly.” Holding Lance’s gaze, he uses his arms to mime himself flipping Lance into the water. Lance groans and buries his face in his hands.

“I never said my decision was founded in logic and intelligence.”

“Clearly,” Keith grumbles. He pulls his knees to his chest and rests his forearms across them, pillowing his head on his arms. His anger had left his body alongside his words, and he is left feeling oddly worn out. “Then again, I’m not exactly the best poster child for good decision making.”

Lance laughs, short and sharp. “That’s an understatement. I kinda understand  _ why _ you did it, but really Keith?  _ Really? _ You chose  _ Zarkon _ over me?” Lance bats his eyelashes at Keith and pouts, but he only gets a shove to the shoulder for his trouble.

Actually, I was talking about choosing to betray Zarkon,” Keith snarks, tilting his nose into the air. “Worse decision I ever made.”

“Rude!” Lance declares, but then pauses. “...Why did you choose to betray him?”

Keith turns to look incredulously at Lance and the Blue Paladin hastens to explain himself. “Not like that! It’s just…I know you. You’re a reactive guy, Keith, and something usually has to happen to get you to make a decision that…big. So, what happened?”

Silence blankets the small sandbar and its occupants, and Lance thinks he won’t ever get an answer.

“...It was you,” Keith says at last, knocking Lance’s breath from his lungs. “I turned against Zarkon because of you.”

Lance blinks and attempts to realign the connectors in his brain, staring in awe at the man beside him. “What do you mean, it was me?” he asks slowly. His heart aches at the sight of Keith, all curled up on a sandbar, painfully earnest.

Keith swallows and explains. “During the first battle against Altea, I was in the flag ship's control room. I saw Zarkon’s forces attacking you, and I asked him to stop, but he refused.” Lance stares at Keith’s profile in shock and wonder. “So, I used my bayard to sabotage the steering system and punched Zarkon in the face. He had me locked up right after.”

Lance thinks back to the first battle in the war, the only one he had fought in as a proper prince of altea, and remembers fear permeating the air inside Blue and the blasts that rocked his lion’s frame. He also remembers the main threat’s inexplicable ceasefire, and how it had drifted off course and stopped attacking right when Lance had been pinned by enemy forces. Keith had been the one to save him, Lance realizes, and then he registers the rest of Keith’s sentence.

“...You punched the emperor of the known universe in the face?!  _ Why _ ?!”

Keith just shrugs, shit-eating grin tugging at his lips, and shifts to face Lance head on. “I did it for you, idiot,” he says, dark eyes full of wonder and a softer, sweeter emotion.

“Holy quiznak, I love you,” Lance whispers, tears flooding his eyes quickly and without warning. (After all, there is something incredibly touching about the love of your life doing something utterly and completely idiotic all for your sake.) Lance reaches forward, slowly enough that Keith can pull away, and cups his chosen’s face in his hands, guiding his lips forward to meet Lance’s own.

“I love you, too,” Keith murmurs against Lance’s lips, and then he kisses back.

The kiss wins no awards as far as technical prowess goes, but it does kickstart a birth ten thousand deca-phoebs in the making. The stars that float above, shining down on the Red and Blue lions, a water-logged planet, and a mind-controlling monster that Keith and Lance had yet to uncover but will, pale in comparison to the brightness that shines from the pair.

Two stars fully formed and orbiting one another once more, their reunions adds a bit of a balance to the universe. It rights some wrongs and checks some balances, but most importantly, it brings together two people, stars shining in the stretch of space they have been gifted, who should never have been apart in the first place.

\---

Pidge is the one who figures out that the Altean’s memory storage technology can be used to recreate and record popular songs from Earth. It is Lance who demands that they use this newfound power as an excuse to throw a party. Hunk instantly sets to work preparing all kinds of delicacies, experimenting with random spices and mixing flavors relentlessly. The use of the ballroom, abandoned and dusty though it may be, is Allura’s idea. Coran, clearly excited over the idea of a party, takes over decoration and relentlessly hangs streamers and lanterns from every bare surface. Shiro is given the difficult task of dragging Keith from the training room, and he does so by claiming that the party is mandatory and an excellent team bonding opportunity.

By the time the food and decorations are prepared, music has begun to flow from speakers and nunvill has begun to flow from ancient bottles, and Team Voltron, an assortment of seven aliens, a found family, finds themselves acting as the sole life of a party in a ballroom designed for over five hundred guests.

The low hanging streamers, criss-crossed throughout the corners and overhead of the room help, but there is no hiding the fact that though the Castle of Lions once housed many lives, it is fairly barren now. Lance, in particular, currently appearing as an Altean since they aren’t on a mission, finds himself unsettled by the emptiness, and he chatters and rants and speaks loudly to keep the silence from taking over.

“You know, Keith and I met in this room,” he tells the three Earthlings with his arm slung over the afore-mentioned Galra. “He spilled nunvill all over the front of my robes during a funeral.”

“It was a  _ life celebration _ !” Keith sputters, his own arm resting around Lance’s hips. “And I helped you clean it off!”

“True,” Lance admits, side-eyeing his boyfriend with a knowing smirk. “You also got me out of socializing with the Rygnirathians, so that’s a plus.”

“You also met the love of your life, so yet another plus,” the traitorous Pidge comments dryly. Lance begins to pout, but then Keith chuckles and the sound of it leaves him unable to be upset for long.

“Yeah,” Lance says. It is soft and secret, an admittance between the two of them, and Keith’s laugh putters out into a wonder-filled gaze as he turns to look at Lance.

“Lance, I–,” Keith begins, but then the song changes and an upbeat tune comes over the speakers. The instrument sounds remarkably like a hegedu, and the beat itself sounds remarkably like the old Altean dance songs, despite it clearly being from Earth.

Keith can see the idea infiltrate Lance’s brain, take root, and sprout possibilities, but he is still ill-prepared when Lance bolts forward, tugging Keith’s behind him by the wrist to the center of the dance floor, declaring loudly, “ _ Yaaaaas _ !”

(Off to the side, Hunk turns to a smirking Pidge, a questionable look on his face. “Ed Sheeran?  _ Really _ ?”

Pidge shrugs. “It’s catchy.”)

Keith and Lance automatically assume their dancing positions, Lance having had the steps drilled into him by tutors since birth and Keith having had the steps drilled into him since the beginning of their relationship. A disembodied voice adds to the hegedu riff, and the two are off, a two-person storm of stomping feet and waving arms, twirling around each other.

The steps are relatively simple, and they know them so well that they add a few extra moves just for the heck of it, laughing as they effortlessly keep up with each other. The beat drops after they’ve done the dance rotation twice, and the two put more fervor into their movements.

“Did this singer just rhyme ‘Mulligan’ with ‘ _ religion’ _ ?” Lance exclaims as he steps, steps, cross-steps, claps, and Keith laughs during the following spin back.

“Just dance, Lance,” Keith tells him, tone light and laughter bubbling.

“Now  _ that’s _ a rhyme,” Lance says as they bump their right heels forward twice, then bump their right toes backwards twice. Keith huffs another laugh and rolls his eyes and Lance just cackles maniacally.

The others in the room watch as Lance and Keith effortlessly complete the dance moves, spinning around each other and stepping in sync. For Allura and Coran, it is the rightful ending that the two deserve, and for everyone else, it is the beginning of an amazing new story.

All of them, however, are wrong because when they look at the dancing boys, they just see two people in love. They don’t see the cosmic dust swirling in the air or the planets aligning amongst the streamers. They don’t see two stars, spinning and spinning and spinning, out of control and towards each other, moving closer and closer as the song reaches its end, and the two finally collide, the universe broken and resculpted into something bright and pure and wonderful.


End file.
